LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



©fop. ©mrarafrf In, 



TEN DATS WITH 

D. L. MOODY 

Comprising a Collection of 

His Sermons, 

Also Sermons and Addresses by prominent Christian 

vjorhers at the Christian Convention held at 

Northfield, Mass., the home of Mr. Moody. 



Reported foe The New Yoke: Weekly Witness, and Pttblishei 
by arrangement with john dotjgall & co. 



MEW YORK: 

J. S. Ogilvie and Comfajsy, 






"B^ vm 



I The Libra 



RF { 

°* CONGK } 

WASHf> 




Copj-right, 1886, by 
J. S. Ogilivie and 



NORTHFIELD, THE HOME OF MR. MOODY. 7 

go and find the posts themselves, put them in the 
ground, and board them together." With such 
kindly, but discriminating treatment, it is no won- 
der his pupils are all self-reliant, docile and diligent. 

SANKEY SOUND YET. 

Mr. Sankey, I am happy to say, has not looked 
better for years. He tells me the reports of his ill- 
ness in London were much exaggerated. He had an 
attack of liver complaint as a result of seven months 
of overwork ; but the rumors as to his loss of voice 
were groundless. "Now," he says, "I have got 
back my liver, and I am all right." Certainly I 
have not heard him sing better within recent recol- 
lection. His voice is clear, melodious and power- 
ful, and the peculiar pathos and charm of expression 
which place him easily alone among singers, have 
fully reappeared. Now that Mr. Moody has called 
to his aid a newer man in the department of song, 
Mr. Sankey is not likely to be so hard- worked, and 
will, it is to be hoped, be better able to preserve his 
health. He has taken a house in Northfield, and the 
Divine favor evidently rests upon him richly in every 
way. 

THE NEW SINGER. 

Considerable curiosity has been evinced to see and 
hear Mr. Moody's new singer, Mr. Towner, and it is 
the unanimous verdict that he has secured a prize. 
All are greatly pleased with the new acquisition, 
both as a singer and as a man. Mr. Towner 
was born in North-eastern Pennsylvania, in the 
same region which gave to the world Mr Bliss 



8 NORTHFIELD, THE HOME OF MR. MOODY. 

and Mr. McGranahan. His father was a noted 
singer and choir organizer, and was the first instruct- 
or of P. P. Bliss. He himself began life as a local 
teacher and leader of musical institutes. His first 
appearance in a wider field was as the singing com- 
panion of Dr. L. W. Munhall, recently Y. M. C. A. 
State Secretary of Indiana, and now an evangelist. 
Dr. Munhall was the organizer of Mr. Moody's tour 
in the western States last Winter, and thus Moody 
was brought into contact with Towner. He has 
secured him at a comfortable salary for a term of five 
years. Mr. Towner's manner of singing is like, and 
yet unlike, that of other singing evangelists. "Shut 
your eyes," says Mr. Moody, " and you would think 
you were hearing Bliss." I have heard Mr. Bliss, 
and while there is a resemblance in some respects, 
in others there is a great resemblance to Mr. Sankey. 
Mr. Towner is taller than either Moody or Sankey, 
is of slender build and young-looking, with bright 
eyes, thin mustache, and no beard. His voice is a 
clear strong baritone, in good cultivation, and with a 
distinct enunciation like Mr. Sankey' s, and a 
speaking rather than singing manner which is very 
effective. He excels as an organizer and trainer of 
choirs, and composes music of high merit. A hardy 
physique renders him available for the extremely try- 
ing work in which Mr. Moody has lately been engaged. 
"Last Winter," said he, " we were on an average 
two nights a week on the rail, and at every place we 
went to I had to deal with new material and lead the 
singing almost alone. The strain was terrible. So 



NORTHFIELD, THE HOME OF MR. MOODY. 9 

they say I am about the only man Mr Moody can't 
lay on his back." 

GREAT IMPROVEMENTS. 

Those who were here in 1881 are surprised to see 
the many changes and improvements. Two new 
buildings have risen, as if by magic, on the grounds 
of the Girls' Seminary, and another in connection 
with the Boys' School at Mount Hermon. The 
oldest building, now called East Hall, it will be 
remembered, is situated some distance from the 
road up the hill on the northern side of Mr. Moody's 
house. Farther north, nearer the road, and on the 
edge of the Bonar Glen, there has been erected a 
larger and very handsome building, called Mar- 
quand Hall. It cost sixty thousand dollars, which 
came from the Marquand estate, of which Mr. D. 
W. Mc Williams, of Brooklyn, is residuary legatee. 
Work was begun last summer, and the opening took 
place in January of this year. The material is dark 
red brick. The style is a modification of the Queen 
Anne, with the close-cut eaves, low ceilings and 
small-paned windows of that order, combined with 
many modern features. The building is used en- 
tirely as a dormitory, and is capable of accommodat- 
ing eighty students, with office, drawing-room, 
dining-hall, chapel, etc. On the fifth of February 
occurred the birthday of Mr. Moody's mother, and 
a reception was held in this building. Mr. Moody's 
forty-eighth birthday was the same day, but the 
celebration was chiefly in honor of "Grandma 
Moody." The loving hands of the pupils placed 



10 NORTHFIELD, THE HOME OF MR. MOODY. 

over the large fireplace in the chapel the inscription, 
which still remains : " Her children arise up and 
call her blessed.' 5 Telegrams of congratulation were 
received from all over the world. There are now 
three dormitories connected with the seminary, with 
a combined scholarship of one hundred and eighty, 
namely, sixty in the East Hall, eighty in the Mar- 
quand Hall, and forty in a reconstructed farm- 
house by the roadside, called Bonar Hall. About 
midway between Marquand Hall and East Hall 
stands a handsome new building of granite, used as 
a recitation hall. No name has yet been given to 
it, but because of the material, it is generally called 
Stone Hall. The cost of this building, like the new 
building at Mount Hermon, was borne by the hymn- 
book fund. Mr. Moody says, when pointing to 
either structure : " Mr. Sankey sang that building 
up. 5 ' Stone Hall is a very massive-looking two- 
story and basement building. The first story is 
divided into class-rooms. In designing the second 
story, the first thought was to use it for recitation 
rooms ; but Mr. Moody concluded that he must have 
some place for congregational purposes, so that this 
hall is now used as the principal auditorium. The 
recitation halls on the first floor are sufficient at 
present, but if more are needed, it is designed to 
add wings to the building, which will also afford 
room for a library. This hall was dedicated on the 
seventeenth of June. Much care and labor have 
been expended in beautifying the grounds, so that 
they now present the aspect of a park. A windings 
macadamized drive, takes the place of the straight 



NORTHFIELD, THE HOME OF MR. MOODY. 11 

earth road in front of East Hall, and similar drives 
afford access to the other buildings. Foot-walks 
will be added later. 



12 THE GATHERING. 



THE GATHERING. 



Dr. Pentecost, of Brooklyn, who has a summer 
residence here, Dr. Pierson, of Philadelphia, and 
Dr. Gordon, of Boston, are among the distinguished 
speakers in attendance. Pastors, evangelists, super- 
intendents of city missions, and Christian workers 
of every kind, to the number of about five hundred, 
are on the ground, thronging the meetings, exchang- 
ing thoughts, hints for work, and discoveries in the 
deep thoughts of Scripture. 

DR. PIERSON'S ADDRESS. 

At the opening meeting on Wednesday forenoon, 
August 5, the principal speaker was the Eev. Dr. 
Arthur T. Pierson, pastor of the Bethany Presby- 
terian Church (connected with John Wannamaker's 
famous Sunday-school) in Philadelphia. His subject 
was, "Being filled with the Spirit." In Ephesians 
v, 18, Paul says : "Be not drunk with wine, where- 
in is excess ; but be filled with the Spirit." Evi- 
dently he had in mind a contrast between the sensual 
effects of strong drink and that Divine intoxication 
which comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit. 
What are the effects of alcoholic inebriation ? An 
expansion of vision followed by blurring of sight ; 
unnatural exhibitions before the brain , great hilar- 



THE GATHERING. 13 

ity, followed by moroseness ; on the muscular sys- 
tem, in stimulating to efforts ; upon the speech, in 
muddling language. How different the effects of 
the Holy Spirit ? What are they ? The eyes see with 
truth and power; the mind is aroused to grand 
efforts of thought ; the faculty of speech to most 
gracious and eloquent utterances ; while the whole 
person is strengthened and the disposition attuned to 
the spirit of Christ. The effects of drink in excess are 
disastrous ; no man can ever be filled with the Holy 
Ghost to excess. We need to realize more the per- 
sonality of the Holy Ghost. A Brooklyn clergyman 
lately defined the Holy Spirit as a shadowy effluence 
proceeding from the Father and the Son. How 
would it sound if he should baptize a child "in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
shadowy effluence," etc. Deny the personality of 
the . Holy Ghost and you deny everything. The 
fullness of the Holy Ghost would be an eye-salve on 
the ministers of the land, so much clearer would 
they see. How are we to arrive at this fullness of 
the Spirit ? The twenty-ninth chapter of Exodus 
tells us. If we, by putting ourselves aloof from our 
sins and unclean things, hallow ourselves to the 
utmost, the Holy Spirit will enter us fully, and Him- 
self sanctify us. 

BR. PENTECOST'S ADDRESS. 

In the afternoon, the Eev. Dr. Pentecost, of Brook- 
lyn, took for a subject: "The sin and the danger 
of offering strange fire in our service of the Lord. " 
Satan, he said, had been busy not only filling the 



14 THE GATHERING. 

world with sin, but defiling whatever is good. He 
counterfeits the best things God has done for men. 
The Lord Himself finds him in his own wheat-field 
oversowing the wheat with tares. We are not ig- 
norant of his devices, and it will be well for us to 
look closely into the most holy things, and see 
whether they are really of God or of some other 
spirit. In Leviticus X. we read how Nadab and 
Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord, and 
were smote with fire that they died. They were the 
sons of Aaron. This was the very beginning of the 
Mosaic dispensation. The whole circumstance was 
startling, and it ought to startle us. Notice that fire 
is spoken of throughout the Bible as a symbol of the 
presence of God and His energy. Thus it appeared 
in the flaming sword at the Garden of Eden, in the 
burning bush, in the pillar of cloud and fire, in the 
great Shekinah of the Temple, and in the altar 
sacrifices. With fire Elijah fought out his great 
battle with the priests of Baal. In the New Testa- 
ment the gift of the Holy Ghost was made manifest 
to the people in tongues of fire. The service of the 
Israelites was very similar to that of surrounding 
nations; but whereas the latter kindled the fires 
upon their altars, God distinguished His service by 
sending down fire from Heaven. That is the differ- 
ence between true religion and its counterfeit. Nat- 
ural religion depends on the energy of the flesh. 
Supernatural religion depends on the energy of the 
Spirit of God, which comes down from above. It is 
quite possible to be perfectly right in the forms of 
our service, and yet destitute of Divine power. To 



THE GATHERING. 15 

see how essential is this fire from above, look out 
two or three passages. In Genesis iv, 4, God had 
respect to Abel's offering, and hence He must have 
burnt it with fire. In Judges vi, 21, when Gideon 
had laid the flesh and cakes upon the rock, the angel 
touched them and they were consumed by fire. No 
doubt the messenger had looked like an ordinary 
man, but now Gideon perceived that he was the 
angel of the Lord. On Mount Carmel the priests of 
Baal might have kindled a fire, but it would not 
have been heavenly fire. It was the fire from Heaven 
which vindicated Elijah and attested the true 
God. In I Chronicles xxi. 26, David made an 
offering, and called upon the Lord ; and He an- 
swered him from heaven by fire. In II Chroni- 
cles, vii. 1, when Solomon had made an end of 
praying, the fire came down from Heaven, and 
the glory of the Lord filled the house. Fire, 
then, we see, is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. In 
the New Testament this is still more clear. The 
Divine energy, as finally manifested to the Church, 
was in the form of tongues of fire. But beware of 
strange fire ! In Leviticus xvi, 12, Aaron was bid- 
den to take a censer of live coals from off the altar 
of the Lord, and use it to offer up incense. He must 
not kindle the censer with any other fire but that 
which had come down from Heaven. It was the 
neglect and contempt of this commandment which 
constituted the sin of Nadab and Abihu. They 
dared to worship God with strange fire. Suppose the 
Apostles who had been told to tariy at Jerusalem 
till fire was sent down from Heaven had dared to 



16 THE GATHERING. 

disobey. Suppose Peter had said to John, "John, 
four or five days have passed, and how do we know 
the Spirit is coming ? Perhaps it has come. We 
know the Gospel; we are witnesses of the cruci- 
fixion and the resurrection. Why not go and preach?" 
What would have happened ? The message would 
have been an utter failure. We have the Gospel, 
we have the right forms, but oh ! let us beware of 
preaching in the energy of the flesh. We must have 
Holy Ghost power. Nadab and Abihu were slain 
at the very beginning of the Mosaic dispensation. 
Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead at the very 
beginning of the history of the Church. The speaker 
said he sometimes trembled lest a strange fire had 
crept unawares into his own service. We need to 
watch. 

Kev. R. 0. Morse, secretary of the International 
Committee Y. M. C. A., spoke for ten minutes on 
"What more can be done to reach our young men." 
He described the vast work accomplished by the 
Young Men's Christian Association, and showed the 
need of multiplying the workers in this fruitful vine- 
yard. 



ME, MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE). 17 



MB. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 



At the forenoon meeting of Thursday Mr. Moody- 
spoke on "The Bible : how to study it, and how to 
use it." He said, in substance: It is a great thing 
to acquire, an appetite for the Word of God. If we 
can get a love for the Word, we will get something 
that will last. I would like to find the first Christian 
feeding upon the Word of God without growing. 
A great many Christians wonder why they don't 
grow. It's because they are not feeding. A good 
many souls are all dried up, afl withered up, because 
they haven't been fed. I think David had this idea 
when he wrote the one hundred and nineteenth 
Psalm. There must be something in the fact that 
the longest chapter in the Bible is about the Bible 
itself. I want to call your attention to nine pas- 
sages in the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm : 
twenty-fifth verse — " Quicken me according to Thy 
Word." Thirty-seventh verse — "Quicken Thou me 
in Thy way." Fortieth verse — " Quicken me in Thy 
righteousness." What does this nation need to-day 
more than to be quickened in righteousness ? It is 
not mere gush and sentiment this nation wants, so 
much as it is a revival of downright honesty. Fif- 
tieth verse — "This is my comfort in my affliction : for 
Thy Word hath quickened me." 88th verse — 



18 ME. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

" Quicken me with Thy loving kindness." Ninety- 
third verse — " I will never forget Thy precepts, fori 
with them Thou hast quickened me." One hundred 
and seventh verse — U I am afflicted very much 
quicken me, Lord, according to Thy Word." One 
hundred and fifty-sixth verse — " Plead my cause 
and deliver me; quicken me according to Thy Word." 
One hundred and fifty-sixth verse — " Great are Thy 
tender mercies, Lord ; quicken me according to 
Thy judgments." That is the way it goes — quicken 
me according to Thy Word, according to Thy pre- 
cepts, according to Thy way. That's what we all 
want to pray this morning. An old Scotchman 
made this remark: " David said 'I have hid Thy 
Word in my heart.' That was a good thing, in a 
good place, for a good purpose." Some people carry 
the Bible under their arms. Well, that's better than 
not to carry it at all. Some people have got a good 
deal of it in their heads. That's better. But when 
you get it in the heart, that is best of all. When a 
man gets the Bible in his heart, it is going to make 
a change in his whole life. The trouble with a good 
many Christians is they are good in spots. A man 
once said he had a good well, only it would dry up in 
Summer and freeze up in Winter. Some Christians 
are just like that well — good at certain times. But 
when a man is feeding on the Word of God he is 
good all the time. I really think that instead of so 
many of the prayer -meetings we have, we ought to 
have more meetings for reading and studying the 
Word of God. When I pray, I am talking to God ; 
when I am reading the Word, it is God speaking to 



MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 19 

me. David said the Word of God was like fire in 
his bones. I don't believe a man or woman is fit for 
God's service till they catch fire in this way. 

THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE OLD. 

Now, it is getting to be very common — very fash- 
ionable in certain quarters, even among professed 
Christians — to hear men say, " I believe in the New 
Testament, but I don't believe in the Old." We hear 
that on the right hand and on the left. I pray to 
God that we may be delivered from this idea. It is 
doing a thousand times more harm than all the lec- 
tures of infidels to hear Christians say, "This and 
this isn't inspired." One minister said he had cut 
everything down to the four Gospels. They con- 
tained everything, and he didn't see why he shouldn't 
do as St. Paul did, and go to the fountain head. It 
wasn't long before that man fell into sin. Unsound 
in doctrine, unsound in practice. We want to be- 
lieve the whole Bible. We want to take the whole 
of it, from Genesis to Revelation. It is most absurd 
to hear a man talk about believing the New Testa- 
ment, and not believing the Old. In the four Gospels 
Christ quotes from twenty-two of the books of the 
Old Testament. I suppose we get only a fragment 
of what Christ said. I believe that for years after 
the death of Christ the air was full of the words 
which fell from His lips. And, so, I have no doubt, 
that in His quotations from the Old Testament He 
quoted from every book. In His words, as recorded 
in Matthew, we find nineteen quotations, in Mark 
fifteen, in Luke twenty-five, and in John eleven dif- 



20 MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BlBLtf. 

f erent passages ; not only just isolated verses, but 
great blocks taken out of the Old Testament and 
transferred into the New. So you see how absurd it 
is for men to say they believe in the New and don't 
believe in the Old. Why, the New Testament is 
made up largely from passages from the Old. Over 
and over again you will hear Christ say, "This is 
done that the Scriptures might be fulfilled." In 
Hebrews there are eighty-five Old Testament quota- 
tions. In Eevelation there are two hundred and 
forty-five — more than in any other book. " Heaven 
and earth shall pass away," said Christ, "but My 
word shall not pass away." How absurd for any one 
to think the Word of God is going to pass away ! 
There never was a time in the history of the world 
when so many Bibles were being printed as there are 
to-day. When Christ was speaking those words I 
can just imagine I hear some infidel saying: i ' 'Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not 
pass away !' Hear that Jewish peasant talk ! I 
never heard such conceit in my life from any one." 
There was no shorthand reporter taking down His 
words, and they seemed to have been lost. But 
nearly nineteen hundred years pass away, and His 
words are going to the very corners of the earth, hi 
two hundred and fifty different languages. There 
are about 1,400,000,000 people in the world, and over 
200,000,000 copies of the Bible have been printed by 
the American Bible Society and the British and 
Foreign Bible Society. Then there are societies in 
Germany, France, and other countries, exclusive of 
individuals, that are printing and circulating the 



MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 21 

Scriptures. In fact, there have been more Bibles 
printed in the last seventy years than there were in 
the previous eighteen hundred years. I consider that 
a greater miracle than any other which Christ 
wrought when He was here on earth. I'm glad I 
live in the present day and can see it. 

WHAT MEN CAVIL AT. 

A lady said to me lately, "I can't believe that 
Elijah was fed by ravens. Do you ?" I have no 
more doubt that the ravens fed Elijah than I have 
that I stand here. The very things in the Old Tes- 
tament that men cavil at the most to-day are the 
things the Son of Man set His seal to when He was 
down here, and it is not good policy for a servant to 
be above his master. The Master believed these 
things. Some one says: "You don't believe the 
story of Noah and the flood, do you?" Yes; I 
believe that as much as I believe the Sermon on the 
Mount. Christ said that when He should come 
again it would be as in the days of Noah, when men 
were eating and drinking, and the flood came and 
took them all off. "You don't believe Lot's wife 
was turned into a pillar of salt !" Yes: Christ said : 
" As it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be in the 
coming of the Son of Man." He believed that story 
of Lot's wife — hadn't any doubt about it. " Do you 
believe that the children of Israel were fed in the 
desert on manna ?" Christ said : " Your fathers ate 
manna." "Do you believe the Israelites were saved 
by looking on a brass serpent ?" Christ said: " Even 
as Moses lifted up the brazen serpent." Men will 



22 MR. MOODY 5 S ADDRESS OK THE BIBLE. 

stretch their necks, and look very wise, and say: 
" Why, you don't believe that story about Jonah and 
the whale ?" Yes, I do. Christ said: " For as Jonah 
was three days in the whale's belly, so shall the Son 
of Man be three days in the bowels of the earth." 
" But," they say, "this was impossible. The whale 
is so constructed that it couldn't swallow a man." 
Well; what does the Bible say? "God prepared a 
great fish." If He could speak this world into exist- 
ence, I think He could speak a fish into existence big 
enough to swallow a man. I have a good deal of 
sympathy with that old colored woman who said if 
the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale she would 
believe it; God could make a man large enough to 
swallow a whale. There's no trouble about these 
things, dear friends; no difficulty at all. One of these 
modern philosophers, discussing the story of Balaam, 
said he had examined the mouth of an ass, and it 
was physically impossible for an ass to speak. 
"Ah," said a friend; " you make an ass, and I will 
make him speak." There's nothing more unreason- 
able than infidelity. 

THE BEST WAY TO CONVERT INFIDELS. 

The best way to convert an infidel is to take him 
to the prophecies fulfilled. Look at the prophecies 
concerning Christ. "His name shall be called 
wonderful." Wasn't everything about Him won- 
derful? born of a virgin, carried into Egypt, astound- 
ing the doctors when twelve years old in the Temple. 
Everything about His three years' ministry was 
wonderful — the miracles He performed, His crucifix- 



MK. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 23 

ion with the sun darkened and the vail of the Temple 
rent, His resurrection. Isn't His name wonderful 
to-day. Nineteen hundred years have passed, and 
what crowds will flock to hear about Christ! No 
other name could have brought you into this little 
town. Nothing else brought you from all over the 
country but to be with Jesus. Yes; His name is 
called wonderful. 

A BLESSING IN THE PROPHECIES. 

And so, my friends, what we want is just to take 
up the Word of God and let it speak for itself. I 
have been wonderfully blessed to-day in reading about 
Babylon falling. Take the prophecies in regard to 
Ninevah, and see how they have been fulfilled. 
When I was in the British Museum, a lady called 
my attention to certain relics from Ninevah. I 
looked at them with more interest through her specs. 
In Nahum iii, 6, the Lord says concerning Ninevah: 
'•'I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make 
thee vile, and will set thee as a gazing stock." Isn't 
that exactly what it is, with hundreds of thousands 
of people looking at these things in the British Mu- 
seum taken up out of Ninevah. "They that look 
upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Ninevah is 
laid waste." Isn't it what travelers are saying to- 
day? And then look at Tyre. In Ezekiel xxvi, 5, 
the Lord says: * " It shall be a place for the spreading 
of nets in the middle of the sea." Mr. Corbin, cor- 
respondent of the Boston Journal, visited Palestine 
in 1888, and he has told me that one night, pitching 
his tent on the side of Tyre, what should he see but a 



24 MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

number of men on a bare rock spreading their fish- 
ing nets. Taking out his Bible he read this proph- 
ecy, and noticed how literally it was fulfilled. 

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND. 

It is true there are things in the Bible we don't 
understand, but we are not going to say, "I don't 
believe it because I don't understand it." A man 
said to me once, " What do you do with that pas- 
sage? How do you understand it?" " I don't under- 
stand it." "How do you explain it?" "I don't 
explain it." " What do you do?" " I don't do any- 
thing." There are lots of things I believe that I 
don't understand. There are a good many things in 
astronomy, a good many things about my own sys- 
tem, I don't understand; yet I believe them. And 
I'm glad there are things in the Bible I don't under- 
stand. If I could take that book up and read it as 
I would any other book, I might think I could write 
a book like that, and so could you. I am glad there 
are heights I haven't been able to climb up to. I am 
glad there are depths I haven't been able to fathom. 
It's the best proof that the book came from God. I 
suppose there are a good many things in the proph- 
ecies concerning Christ that no one could understand 
till Christ came and fulfilled them. Just look at 
some of those prophecies. He was to be born in 
Bethlehem, and carried into Egypt. When that 
announcement was made, how strange it must have 
sounded! But when the time came, God put the 
whole world in motion to bring Mary to Bethlehem, 
so that Jesus might be born there. Caesar issued a 



MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 25 

decree that the whole world should be taxed. All 
this was done just to bring that virgin up to Bethle- 
hem. I believe that God would have created a 
world rather than that any prophecy should be 
unfulfilled. 

ECCLESIASTICAL SPOONS. 

Now the question is, How are you going to read 
this book? When I was a young man I thought I 
must be fed with ecclesiastical spoons. Sometimes 
I got sawdust; sometimes I got salt; sometimes I got 
bread. When my little boy Paul first learned to find 
the way to his mouth, he wanted everybody to 
know about it, and it was a great event in our fam- 
ily. Lots of men have been in the Church forty 
years, and if you ask them what they believe they 
will say, "What the Church believes." "Well, 
what does the Church believe?" "I don't know." 
I don't believe any child of God is going to grow till 
he has learned to feed himself. What may be good 
for me may not be good for you. 

ONE BOOK AT A TIME. 

I have been wonderfully blessed, in studying the 
Bible, by taking up one book at a time. I used to^try 
to read the Bible through in a year. I would as 
soon read a dictionary that way now. Sometimes I 
want something to stir me up; other days, I want 
something to comfort me. When you read right 
through, you don't get much comfort. It is a great 
deal better, it seems to me, to take a book at a time. 
Or take a character. Or take a type. How many 



26 ME. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

antetypes there were of Christ — Adam, Abel, Enoch, 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so on all through 
the Old Testament. What a beautiful type Joseph 
is — hated, rejected, and then raised to a throne. 
You can't look into these things without getting fed. 
Another good thing is to take a subject. That's 
what we are trying to do in the Boy's School — and 
that's how we are getting the boy's grounded in the 
fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Take " Eepent- 
ance," for example. Read up everything you can 
find about repentance. Take time. Suppose you 
spend a month; you couldn't spend it better. Get 
people's idea of repentance, and then see what the 
Bible says about it. Dozens of people have repented 
who don't know what repentance is. They think 
they have got to have some strange kind of f eeling. 
A man I used to meet up here in Vermont would 
say to me every time I spoke to him, "Mr. Moody, 
it hasn't struck me yet. A neighbor of mine has 
been converted, and he has been a changed man 
since; but it hasn't struck me." Lots of people 
think repentance is going to strike them like light- 
ning. Well, now, repentance don't come in that way. 
See what Bible repentance is. It isn't fear, it isn't 
f eeling. Then take up ' ' Conversion. " Lots of people 
say, " I hate that word." In some churches there 
isn't much said about it, because people don't like it. 
But I have learned that sometimes the medicine 
people don't like, may be the very best medicine for 
them. I don't like to take pills, but they may be 
the very thing I need. When people shrug their 



MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 27 

shoulders and say, " I don't like conversion," it is 
just the thing they want. 

REGENERATION. 

Take up the Scripture doctrine of the necessity of 
being born again. Lots of people think they can go 
to Heaven on a good moral character. Look at the 
parable of the Prodigal Son. I would rather be the 
younger brother than the other. The elder brother 
had what the world calls a good moral character, 
and yet I think he was about the meanest case in 
the whole Bible. He wouldn't rejoice when his 
younger brother got home, and didn't like it when 
his father had mercy on him. What caused joy in 
the fathers heart caused envy in his. When he 
heard music and dancing he wouldn't go in, and just 
marred that beautiful scene. Many churches are in 
the position of that elder brother, and don't believe 
in conversion. I wonder what some of these people 
will do when they get to Heaven, and some con- 
verted thief is brought in. I suppose they'll say, 
" Don't come near me. I don't want to be near you." 
Or when they meet Mary Magdalene, what will they 
do ? I just think they will have to have a little 
corner in Heaven somewhere off by themselves. 
They can't sing the song of Moses and the Lamb — 
the song of redemption. A man must be made meet 
for the Kingdom of God before he will want to go 
there. Put a man in the presence of God before he 
is made meet for that presence, and he won't want 
to stay — it would be hell there for him. A man 
must be born of the Spirit — born again — regenerated. 



28 MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

We are hearing a good deal about reform, but what 
we want is regeneration. Then take up " Faith." 
We have got false ideas about faith. 

FAITH. 

I used to think that God was going to give me all 
the faith I wanted right away. I was going to do 
wonders. God was going to give me faith enough 
to remove mountains — turn the world upside down. 
■ • Faith cometh by knowledge. " The more you know 
about people the more faith you will have in them, 
if they deserve it. You will have faith in a good 
man if j^ou have known him two years; but you 
will know him a good deal better after ten years, 
and you will have more faith in him. Faith grows. 
And the way to get acquainted with God is by study- 
ing His Word. 

PARDON AND JUSTIFICATION. 

Take up " Justification " and " Pardon." Lots of 
people don't know there is any difference between 
the two things. But there is a great deal of differ- 
ence. Suppose I commit some crime, and I am con- 
victed, and then the Governor pardons me. I come 
back to this town a pardoned man. But suppose the 
judge says there is nothing against me; I come back in 
a different position. There is a good deal of difference 
between justification and pardon. What you want 
is to read up these subjects. It is a great thing to be 
a justified man — God-justified. And I think that 
brings light upon that eighth chapter of Romans. 
Who shall condemn one of God's elect ? God justi- 



C \ 



MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 29 

fled me, and is he going to let anyone turn round 
and bring something against me ? That would be a 
queer God, wouldn't it — a queer judge ? These great 
doctrines ought to be studied. Take "Sanctifica- 
tion." I hear a great many people talking about 
sanctification; but I think we ought to go more to 
the Bible to see what it says, and let the Word of 
God speak for itself. When I was converted I 
thought I was going to have no more trouble with 
the old nature. But I soon found that the old nature 
was there. I had just as bad a temper as if I hadn't 
been converted, and I would say, "Why, that is the 
old temper coming back." By-and-by I learned that 
when a man is converted he has got two natures, 
the carnal nature and the spiritual nature. He has 
got a higher nature and a lower nature. He has got 
the old man yet. Do you think he is dead ? Judic- 
ially he is, but in reality he ain't. If he was, you 
wouldn't have to watch him, would you ? If a man 
is dead he ain't going to run away, is he ? We have 
to keep watching the old man, and putting him in 
subjection all the time. I don't know any doctrine 
that needs more to be preached in our churches than 
this, that there is danger of the old man coming 
back. I haven't got time to speak of the doctrine of 
the Resurrection. I've got more comfort out of that 
doctrine than any other in the whole Bible. I look 
forward to the time when I am going to have a 
resurrected body. My Saviour is going to give me a 
body like His glorious body, that cannot faint and 
cannot die. It is going to be just like His. I don't 
know anything that will take a man out of the 



30 MR. MOODY'S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

world much quicker than this idea. You must look 
in the New York papers to see how bonds and stocks 
are. It takes a man right out of the current of the 
world. Then there is the controversy about the 
Millennium. Some say Christ is coming at the 
beginning of the thousand years, and others that He 
is coming at the end of it. Let the Bible speak for 
itself. Don't listen to what this man and that man 
says about it, but study the Bible. And as Bishop 
Stevens, of Philadelphia, used to say, "Don't study 
it with your little red light of Methodism, or your 
little blue light of Presbyterianism, or the light of 
the Episcopal Church, but just the light of Calvary." 
Come without prejudice and say, " Whatever this 
book teaches I must receive." Don't say, "Well, I 
don't believe He is coming anyway for a thousand 
years." Take up the doctrine of "Assurance." 

ASSURANCE. 

A good many people honestly believe that it is 
presumptuous to say they are saved — that they have 
passed from death unto life — that they are going to 
have a place at God's right hand. But this book 
teaches very clearly that we can know we are saved. 
If we want light we can get it. We can know we 
have passed from death unto life if we are in earnest 
about it. There are twenty-one chapters in the Gos- 
pel of John, and they all speak of believing. " Be- 
lieve " is the key of that Gospel. It just runs right 
straight on in the whole book. But turn over into 
John's first Epistle, and you will find that the key 
to that Epistle is "Know." Forty-two times that 



mh. Moody's address on the bible. 31 

word occurs in these few chapters. " These things 
are written that ye might know." I don't believe it 
is the mind of God we should go through the world 
in darkness, not knowing whether we have been 
saved or not. I think the best book on Assurance is 
the first Epistle of John. If you are in doubt about 
your own salvation, read it, and you will know. I 
think Christ taught this doctrine very clearly when 
the disciples came back to Him after He had sent 
them out by twos. They were greatly rejoiced be- 
cause they had had such wonderful power, but He 
seemed to check them, and said, " I will give you 
something to rejoice for. Eejoice that your names 
are written in Heaven." He wanted them to know 
it. Do you think Paul, amid all his difficulties and 
persecutions, would have gone right on if he hadn't 
known his name was written in Heaven ? Do 
you think those martyrs would have gone to the 
stake if they had had any doubt about their salva- 
tion ? It is the privilege of every child of God to 
walk in the light — to say, "Abba, Father! Heaven 
is my home. God is my Father, Jesus Christ is my 
Saviour." I have just touched some of these great 
doctrines. 

believe the book. 

In closing, let us take the Book, and let us believe 
it from beginning to end — every word true — and the 
words we can't understand, let us believe them. — 
You that are working in the vineyard, feed on the 
Word of God. I believe the reason the people won't 
come more than they do into our churches is because 



32 MR. MOODY*S ADDRESS ON THE BIBLE. 

we don't feed them enough on the Word of God. — 
They have been fed on sawdust long enough. For 
men who have nothing but essays it is hard to get 
pulpits, and it will be harder. The reason there are 
so many pulpits vacant is that there isn't men 
enough willing to give the Word of God. Go into 
one of our city parks in Winter to feed the birds 
and throw down a handfull of sawdust. You may 
deceive them once, but you won't a second time. — 
But throw down crumbs, and they'll sweep them up. 
So in the churches, give people the Word of God and 
they will know the difference. A man once made 
an artificial bee, and thought no one could tell the 
difference between that and a real bee. But another 
man said he could show the difference. He put the 
two bees down on the table, and then put a drop of 
honey before them. The real bee went for the 
honey There are a great many artificial Christians, 
and they don't want the Word of God. They'll go 
somewhere else. Well, let them go. For every one 
that goes five will take his place. What we want is 
to give people the Word of God in season and out of 
season, I think we have got to have more expound- 
ing. A great many churches have mere exhortations 
all the time, and it gets very tiresome. There's got 
to be expounding as well as exhortation. I have got 
an idea that the Sunday morning services ought to 
be given to expounding and the afternoon or Sunday 
night given to exhortation or preaching. I believe 
that is the reason the Scotch people have got ths ad- 
vantage of us Americans. 



mr. Moody's address on the bible. 33 

the scotch. 

I don't believe there is any place in the world 
where error has such a slim chance of getting a hold 
as in Scotland. The Scotch are a most wonderful 
people. You've got to be careful in preaching to 
them, or the first thing you know some old woman 
will come up with her Bible under her shawl, and 
say: " Here; you said so and so. The Bible says so 
and so." If you make a misquotation, a Scotchman 
will straighten you right up; but you might make 
forty misquotations in an American church and no- 
body would know the difference. We would have 
better preaching if people would open their Bibles 
and see whether a man is preaching the Word of 
God. In Scotland a minister doesn't think of preach- 
ing till everybody has found the text. Go to Dr. 
Bonar's church, in Glasgow. One of the most im- 
pressive scenes is to see 1,200 or 1,300 people, and 
not a soul but has got a Bible. The old doctor will 
wait till every one has found the place, then he will b 
tell them what the passage in that place means, and 
then he goes on to another verse. When I was in 
London the last time, a solicitor — a lawyer — from 
Edinburg, came down to London to spend a Sunday 
there. After I had got through preaching, and had 
gone back to my little room, he came and said, " I 
was at Glasgow to hear Dr. Bonar." I said, "I 
wish you would tell me what he preached about," 
and he went on and told me. The subject was that 
passage in Galatians in which Paul tells of his going 
up to Jerusalem to see Peter. The Doctor, said my 



34 me. Moody's address on the bible. 

friend, just let his imagination loose a little in de- 
scribing what took place between Paul and Peter. 
He could imagine that one day Peter said, "Paul, 
will you take a walk to-day ?" "Yes." So, arm-in 
arm they walk, talking about the Kingdom of God. 
A little while and they enter the Garden of Geth- 
semane, and Peter says, ' ' There is the very spot where 
Christ prayed. John fell asleep there. James right 
there. I was right there, asleep. I didn't know 
what He was passing through, though I had never 
seen Him so sorrowful. When I awoke, an angel 
stood right there (pointing out the place), and there 
was Christ, sweating great drops of blood, the blood 
running down His face — passing through that last 
agony." The next day Peter turns to Paul and 
says, "Will you take another walk to-day ?" That 
day they go out towards Calvary, and all at once 
Peter stops, and says, " There, Paul ; this is the very 
spot where His Cross was. It isn't quite filled up 
yet. One bleeding thief was hanging there, and the 
other there. Mary stood right there, John there, and 
James there. I was on the outskirts of the crowd. I 
couldn't bear to get near Him that day. I couldn't 
catch a glimpse of His eye, but just looked on Him. 
The next day Peter turns to Paul and says : "Paul, 
shan't we take another walk to-day?" "Yes; I 
would be very glad." They go out toward Bethany, 
and suddenly Peter says, " There, Paul ; this is the 
very last spot where I saw Him. We were talking 
with Him, and all at once I noticed His feet didn't 
touch the ground, and the last I ever saw of Him, 
He was up there in the air ; and while I stood there, 



mr. Moody's address on the bible. 35 

two men — might have been Moses and Elias, I didn't 
know — appeared and talked to us." Now, don't you 
think people like that kind of preaching ? It will 
warm up these cold hearts of ours to hear about 
Christ. Don't you think that literally took place ? 
Nineteen hundred years have passed away, and we 
go to Jerusalem and try to find these spots ; and tell 
me that while Paul was the guest of Peter he wouldn't 
take him and show him the very spot where the 
Lord and Master had gone away to Heaven ? I 
haven't any doubts about it. And what we want is 
just to take the Scriptures and make them real. 
That's what we want — to hear about Jesus Christ — 
and any minister that can feed his people and tell 
them about Christ is the man I want to hear. That's 
what we want in our churches. God help you that 
are preaching to preach the Word of God. Make it 
as plain as you can. If we had more of the Word 
of God there would be fewer defalcations and scan- 
dals inside the Church. It seems to me the time is 
coming when there should be a change in the 
churches of God in this land. 



36 NEW INTEREST— FOREIGN MISSIONS. 



NEW INTEREST— FOREIGN MISSIONS. 



NARRATIVE BY MR. J. E. K. STUDD, OF ENGLAND. 

The convention closed on Friday night. Most of 
the delegates started for home next day. The inter- 
est waxed greater up to the last moment. Mr. Moody 
says : " Probably no man has attended more religious 
meetings than I have in the past ten years, but I 
never saw anything like this." Day after day fresh 
arrivals [came on every train, and towards the close 
the accommodations not only of the three buildings 
of the Young Ladies' Seminary, but those of private 
residences and farmhouses throughout the neighbor- 
hood were taxed to an unprecedented degree. On 
two or three occasions the large auditorium in Stone 
Hall was filled to excess. There were fourteen hun- 
dred chairs in the room, and yet multitudes were 
obliged to stand. At first the daily programme was 
as I described last week ; but on the part of many a 
demand for more meetings arose, till finally there 
were seven distinct meetings in succession in one 
day, besides two or three sometimes going on at the 
same time. The following will afford an idea of the 
pressure: 7:30, breakfast; 8:00, morning services at 
Marquand Hall and East Hall ; 8:30, meeting in the 
tent to hear the reports from Christian workers ; 10 



NEW INTEREST— FOREIGN MISSIONS. 37 

to 12, service of song and regular meeting at Stone 
Hall; 12:30, dinner; 1:30, meeting in the tent for 
prayer and Bible study ; 3 to 5, service of song and 
regular meeting at Stone Hall; 6, supper; 6:30, 
meeting in the tent ; 7:30 to 9, evening services at 
Marquand Hall and East Hall, or a general meeting 
at Stone Hall. 

The delegates from a distance were, most of them, 
accommodated with sleeping rooms at Marquand 
Hall, Stone Hall, and East Hall. Those in the two 
former took their meals at Marquand Hall. Those 
in the East Hall, together with transient guests from 
surrounding towns, took meals in that building. 
The temporary hotel arrangements of the three 
buildings were under the supervision of Mr. C. K. 
Ober, one of the Y. M. C. A. College Secretaries, 
and most admirably were they managed. 

A flutter was caused by the arrival, on Saturday 
night, of Mr. J. E. K. Studd, of London, England. 
He was the last captain of the Cambridge eleven 
of cricketers ; and it will remain to his life-long 
credit, that when Mr. Moody visited Cambridge 
University, and was in danger of a shower of rotten 
eggs from the ribtous students, he boldly took his 
seat beside the evangelist on the platform, and ac- 
complished wonders in quelling the disturbance by 
his personal influence. Mr. Studd is the eldest of 
three brothers, all famous at cricket ; the second of 
whom, Mr. C. T. Studd, is now in China as one of 
the leaders of the band of seven missionaries who 
recently went out in connection with the China In- 
land Mission. Mr. J. E. K. Studd was entertained 



38 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

by Mr. Moody, and accorded much prominence at 
the meetings. He was accompanied by his wife, 
who is a daughter of Lady Beauchamp, and who, 
like her husband, has a brother (Mr. Montagu Beau- 
champ) in China. 

On Monday night Mr. John B. Gough arrived, and 
was entertained by Mr. Moody. He gave one of his 
most eloquent addresses on Wednesday night. Mr. 
William Noble, the distinguished temperance evan- 
gelist of England, who has also been present, spoke 
the same evening. In fact, almost every country 
under the sun has been represented. The register 
shows names from China, India and South Africa. 

During the second week Mr. and Mrs. McGrana- 
han arrived, affording a welcome reinforcement to 
the corps of singers. The male choir of the Boys' 
School at Mount Hermon acquitted itself remark- 
ably well under the leadership of Mr. Towner. Mr. 
Sankey, Mr. and Mrs. McGranahan, and Mr. and 
Mrs. Towner relieved one another at the various ser- 
vices. They were well sustained by a strong volun- 
teer choir ; and even the congregation at large 
seemed to take up the new hymns as if by intuition? 
The vim and gusto with which these w^ere sung pro- 
duced an effect that was most inspiring. 

Mr. Moody presided at all the regular meetings, 
and though the strain upon him was tremendous, he 
looked fresh at the close. In arranging the pro- 
gramme, he seemed to feel his way along, and evi- 
dently depended upon the promptings of the Holy 
Spirit rather than upon any wisdom of his own. 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 39 

A THRILLING NARRATIVE — ADDRESS BY MR. J. E. K. 

STUDD. 

So much enthusiasm was excited by Mr. Studd's 
address in East Hall, that it is given here in full. 
The meeting was for men only, and, at the special 
request of the ladies, the address was repeated with 
slight variations at their meeting in Marquand Hall 
on Tuesday evening. Mr. Studd, on being introduced 
by Mr. Moody, said : 

I want to try to-night to give you a short sketch 
of the way in which the Lord constrained those seven 
missionaries, of whom you have doubtless heard, to 
leave England for China in February last; how the 
Lord anointed them with power, and what He has 
been doing through them since He sent them out. 
First of all, we come to Mr. Moody's and Mr. 
Sankey's visit to Cambridge in 1883 — rather more 
than two years ago now. There we had large meet- 
ings, and certainly some of those men who have 
gone to China were at that time converted. As I 
look at their photographs I can pick out those who 
found Christ for the first time through those meet- 
ings. The first man of whom I will speak, Mr. 
Stanley Smith, was converted about ten years ago. 
He came down to Cambridge when he heard Mr. 
Moody was to come there; for he wanted to see and 
hear the man who had been the means of his con- 
version some eight years before. 

MR. MOODY AT CAMBRIDGE. 

At Cambridge, Mr. Moody had a wonderful work, 
and that work has been going on since ; and from 



40 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

those converts a great many of the men who have 
now offered themselves as missionaries, as well as a 
great many who are waiting, just waiting their 
time — from those converts brought to Christ then, 
these missionary ranks have been filled. One of the 
men converted at that time— Mr. Swan — was one of 
the leading men in the Cambridge University eight; 
and it is a remarkable thing that those seven men 
who have gone out were all men who have made 
their mark. I only mention this to let you see the 
way in which the Lord moves. He doesn't take 
men haphazard — any sort of men; but He takes men 
that He means to make something of — men who are 
just fit to carry on the work as He wants it carried 
on. 

EFFECT OF THE LONDON MEETINGS. 

Well, then; Mr. Moody was in London. My 
brother, who had been in Australia, playing for the 
English cricket team, and, therefore, hadn't a chance 
to hear Mr. Moody at Cambridge, when he came to 
London was constantly at his meetings. And there 
he was really awakened up. He had been getting 
rather cold, and though he was a true Christian all 
the time, hadn't been doing any religious work. 
But at those meetings what he heard and saw stirred 
his heart, and immediately he felt that he must set 
about some kind of work. Mr. Moody set him at 
work in the inquiry-room, and in the after-meetings. 
Then he set him at work amongst his own friends, 
and the Lord at once began to bless him in that line. 
I shall never forget the joy that filled his heart when. 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 4:1 

the first five men he brought to Mr. Moody's meetings 
found the Lord Jesus Christ there ; and they were 
five of the leading cricketers we had in England at 
the time. They were his own friends, and it was an 
immense encouragement to him. Every moment he 
could spare from his cricket, or from his work, he 
used to go to those meetings ; and night after night 
he stayed as long as there were people in the hall to 
be talked to. Well ; his health gave way — -he had 
hurt himself a little by a certain accident at cricket, 
and then from hard work — and that summer he 
could not do much, and he took a rest in the country. 

"WHAT WILT THOU HAVE ME TO DO?" 

One thing troubled him. He was training for the 
bar — had passed his examination at Cambridge, and 
the trial examination for the English bar, and was 
intending to practice law. But he felt that he had 
enough to live upon, and didn't want to occupy his 
life in making money ; he just wanted to be given 
up to the Lord. Yet he could not make out what 
the Lord wanted him to do. I think the pressure 
upon his mind in trying to find out what he ought 
to do rather kept him back from getting his 
full health. However, he stayed out in the country 
for some time resting. After a while he came back 
again to London, well; but the same difficulty 
troubled him. He consulted among his friends 
about it, and their advice was, as far as human ad- 
vice could go, that he should wait tiU the Lord 
should clearly point the way, and, in the meantime, 
go on at the work he was doing, so as not to lose any 



42 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

time, whatever happened. But he could not turn 
his thoughts to anything else. At last he made up 
his mind he would just take the words in the first 
chapter of Acts — the commission Christ gave to His 
disciples: "But ye shall receive power, after that 
the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be 
witnesses unto Me, both into Jerusalem, and in all 
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part 
of the earth." Then he just practically shut him- 
self up from every one, and spent day after day in 
his own room, seeking an enduement of power from 
on High, and seeking guidance. I don't know how 
long — I think it was two days or more — that he kept 
himself in his room (except two hours a day which 
he spent in exercise), reading the Bible, and the 
Bible alone — spent the whole time in reading that 
Bible and in praying, asking God what he would 
have him to do. 

DECIDING TO GO TO CHINA. 

In one way and another China was brought before 
him. He had reached a state of mind that he was 
willing to stay in England or go to China, or go any- 
where, so long as he got his orders from the Lord. 
I don't know how he came to think of China. No 
one spoke to him; no one even knew what he was 
doing — I didn't know myself till afterwards. But 
somehow or other the idea that he must go to China 
was thrust upon him, and he could not get out of it. 
Then he heard that Mr. Stanley Smith had decided 
to go to China; he had seen his way perfectly clear 
about six months before, perhaps longer. Mr. 



• NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 43 

Stanley Smith came one day and told my brother 
that he was going to the China Inland Mission 
prayer meeting at Mildmay Park. Mr. Martin was 
going to be there, and a man was going to speak 
who had walked across China by himself, and my 
brother thought he must be something of a man who 
could do that. He went to hear him, and all the 
time seemed to be getting his mind more and more 
on China. The word kept ringing in his ears. He 
went, I say, to the meeting, and heard this man 
speak; and there the claims of China came home to 
him, and God just seemed to call him right there 
and then. He came home late at night; and I well 
remember how startled I was when he told me for 
the first time that he was going to China. I don't 
know that I ever had such a blow. You can imag- 
ine that it was an awful wrench, coming upon me, 
as it did, so suddenly. I said I thought we had 
better make it a matter of prayer. I didn't believe 
it was quite clear. I thought he had been wrought 
up to an excitement at that meeting, and that the 
impression might pass away. So we just knelt in 
prayer together and asked the Lord to make it per- 
fectly clear what my brother should do, and if it was 
His will that he should go to China, to remove every 
single doubt from our minds. Then my brother 
went to bed. Ordinarily he got to sleep directly his 
head touched the pillow — for usually he was working 
hard at one thing or another — but that night he 
could not really sleep, but rather dozed. He would 
wake up every two hours, and when he slept it 
was only a sort of dozing. And every time he 



44 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

woke up, that verse, which he hadn't read for some 
time, certainly not for months, that verse in the 
second Psalm: "Ask of Me, and I shall give thee 
the heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter- 
most parts of the earth for thy possession," kept 
ringing through his mind. In the morning he said 
it was perfectly clear to him what the Lord had for 
him to do — that he had got to go to China. Of 
course, I couldn't say any more; I could not say, 
" Don't go." That was the first thing that started 
him off. 

MISSIONARY MEETINGS IN CAMBRIDGE. 

Well, then; after that they went up to Cambridge 
— my brother, Mr. Stanley Smith, Mr. Hudson Taylor, 
and several others. First of all, Mr. Stanley Smith 
went up and held some preliminary meetings, and 
stirred up a considerable interest among the students, 
he and my brother working amongst them; and 
then they had a meeting not only for the students, 
but for townspeople, at which they spoke, and others 
as well. Mr. Hudson Taylor presented the claims of 
China, and the work of the China Inland Mission. The 
result of that work was that over thirty men— 
certainly thirty men if not more — offered them- 
selves definitely for Christian work, and not only 
Christian work in England, but wherever the Lord 
would have them to go. Some of them have gone. 
One of them now is out in South Africa, and is 
working his way inland there; others are in China. 
One man, Mr. Polhill-Turner, gave himself up; and 
his brother, who was in the Grenadier Guards at the 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 45 

time, determined to do so as soon as he could. For 
the time there was an obstacle ; he had only joined the 
regiment three weeks before, and he was afraid he 
could not resign his commission; but that matter 
was arranged. 

MEETINGS AT OXFORD. 

p 

Well, after that, Mr. Stanley Smith and my 
brother went to Oxford, and there they met with 
great success. A wonderful interest was stirred up. 
Quite a number — I cannot say how many — decided 
there and then to give themselves also for foreign 
mission work, ready to do whatever the Lord would 
have for them to do. Amongst the students there 
was a prominent leader in athletics — McLean by 
name — a rower in the Oxford eight, and a leading 
man in that crew. In Oxford, perhaps, we hadn't 
been so fortunate in getting hold of the leading men 
of the University, as we had been at Cambridge. 
You know, at college, in order for a man to be much 
thought of, he must be good at athletics or some- 
thing else. Let me explain. In England, for a man 
to be good at athletics is a great honor. In this 
country it is just the other way. Well, continued 
the speaker, what I mean is, that a man must either 
be good at athletics or good in something. Here 
was this fellow, anyhow . He was one of the first 
men in the University in the line of boating. Ho 
was in the audience at one of the meetings held by 
Mr. Stanley Smith and my brother. The Lord 
touched his heart there in some way or another. He 
was not just then brought into the clear knowledge 



46 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

of salvation; but the Word so reached his heart 
that he wrote a check and sent it to the China Inland 
Mission, to the amount of £10. The secretary was 
rather struck with his letter — he was lead from some- 
thing this man said to imagine somehow that he 
hadn't got peace. So, in sending an acknowledg- 
ment, he wrote a long letter to him putting the way 
of peace before him; and the result of that letter 
was that he accepted Christ and came into full peace. 
It so happened that at that time Mr. McLean had to 
go right down to Mortlake, where the whole crew 
were known, and where the race was to take place 
in a few days. After the race was finished Mr. Mc- 
Lean held a mission service at Mortlake. The race 
was on Saturday, and he held this meeting on Sun- 
day. One of the best rowers in the Cambridge 
eight — the Mr. Swan of whom I have already spoken 
— heard that this meeting was to be held, and he 
went up to attend it, taking others with him. Mr. 
Swan is a man who is wonderfully good at anything 
he takes up, and he is going as a missionary himself 
— I think it will be to Africa or China. Well; as a 
result of that meeting, two of the Cambridge crew 
united for the Lord Jesus Christ. The brothel of 
one of them has since followed his example; and he 
was a member of the Dragoon Guards — in a position 
which would be recognized amongst young fellows 
in the country. 

MR. STUDD AND MR. STANLEY SMITH IN SCOTLAND. 

Well, then; after those meetings, my brother and 
Mr. Stanley Smith started for Scotland. They started 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 47 

off in rather an extreme fashion — at least it seemed 
so to us, and yet it seemed to one also that it was 
the Lord's leading; He brought them around to a 
different way of thinking afterwards, but he led 
them then. They gave up everything — never con- 
sidered their means of living; but just went off 
carrying w^hat they had — one coat or suit of clothes 
— and went to Scotland in that way. It just shows 
that if we are willing to leave all for His sake, God 
will bless us. Well; they went off in this way, and 
God just worked most marvelously with them. You 
have heard somewhat of the work in Scotland. At 
Edinburg they held meetings first for two nights, 
and then they took a large place, and held a meeting 
at which there must have been two thousand under- 
graduates present. There never had been such an 
assembly of University students in Endinburg, 
and , 

SUCH INTEREST WAS NEVER KNOWN. 

When my brother and Mr. Stanley Smith spoke, 
the Lord seemed to be working with them — the Lord 
touched those men's hearts. The interest only 
deepened after they had gone. Then they went to 
Glasgow. Great interest was created in every audi- 
dience in the same way. Wherever they went the 
Lord was with them, and there were the most 
wonderful conversions. Let me give you a striking 
case. A young fellow read that my brother was to 
be present at a meeting in one of the places in the 
north of England he went to. This young fellow 
was accustomed to go to places of a very different 



4:8 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

sort; but he thought he would go to this meeting. 
A friend chaffed him a little about it, saying, "I 
hear you are going to help Mr. Studd pray to-night." 
They laughed together and thought it was a good 
joke. But he went to the meeting, and the Lord 
met him there, and he was converted. I could tell 
you more of the most striking cases of the Lord 
working through them. They were not speakers — 
well, Mr. Stanley Smith was a speaker, but my brother 
was not — not an orator anyway. But the Lord 
seemed to be with them in those audiences in a 
wonderful degree. 

A SECOND VISIT TO EDINBURG. 

Just before they left England they thought they 
would go up to those Edinburg fellows again; and 
they were there for, I think, five nights, and the 
interest was deeper than ever. It had gone on grow- 
ing. Those who had decided for the Lord had 
continued steadfast, and had been witnesses for 
Him. And now the movement culminated, and as 
a result of those five nights' work, one hundred and 
twenty of those Edinburg students have given up 
their long vacation, and are preaching the Gospel in 
different cities, towns, #nd villages in England and 
Scotland. They have been sending from time to 
time three or four members as embassies from one 
University to another in term time. Some go to 
Edinburg from Glasgow, and then some from Glas- 
gow to Edinburg, and so on in the different Univer- 
sities — stirring one another up, and telling of the 
things the Lord has done for them. 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 49 

A WONDERFUL MEETING IN LONDON. 

Well ; then they came back to London, and first 
we held a meeting in Eccleston Hall. Then it was 
arranged to hold a meeting in Exeter Hall. A good 
many did not believe the hall would be filled. It 
was only taken practically a week before the time. 
The Young Men's Christian Association were to have 
conducted the meeting ; but they thought the hall 
could not be filled, and then, perhaps, they had a 
good many other things to attend to, so that the 
China Inland Mission found they must take it and 
work the whole thing. The hall holds about 3,000, 
and people thought it would be rather a good thing 
if it should be anywhere near filled. Instead of that, 
half an hour before the time there wasn't a seat to 
be had. The whole of the seven men who were 
going out to China spoke, and the effect was very 
marked. I saw one of the secretaries of the Young 
Men's Christian Association the other day, and he 
says, day by day, they are hearing of the results of 
that meeting. Every day they hear something about 
it. And then the next day, and every day since 
that, the China Inland Mission have had their tables 
packed with letters — so many that they could not 
answer them — from men applying to go to China. 
You see how the Lord worked with them. 

THE VOYAGE TO CHINA. 

And now I will just tell you a little about the voy- 
age out — how wonderfully the Lord blessed them 
there. They went across the Continent and joined 
their ship, the Kaisar-i-Hund, at Suez. On the ship 



50 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

there was a man who was noted as an awful charac- 
ter. He was captain of a merchantman. He had 
come home, leaving his vessel at Calcutta, and in a 
fortnight had quarreled with every one of his friends, 
put on his hat and taken his passage without even 
saying farewell to any one of them ; and now he 
was going out on this same ship. He was exactly 
the same up to Suez, and was known all through 
the ship as a drunken, swearing, infidel man — so 
much so that a Christian soldier in the same cabin 
with him was nearly driven mad with his terrible 
swearing and bad language. One of the stewards 
was heard to say that he didn't believe at all in relig- 
ion, but if that man was converted, he would begin 
to think something about it. This swearing captain 
was so pleased when he heard that the missionaries 
were coming on board that he rubbed his hands with 
glee, because he thought he would turn them into 
such ridicule — he was so delighted with the thought 
of the fun he would have. The first day the mis- 
sionaries came on board some of them 

WENT UP TO THIS MAN 

without knowing much about him, and asked him 
if he ever read the Bible. He snapped them right 
off, and said it was all rubbish. Then Mr. Hoste 
asked him if he would read the Bible with him. 
"Oh, yes," he said ; and so they would read the Bible 
together — the missionary talking and trying to meet 
the infidel's objections. But he didn't seem to pro- 
duce any effect. After two days my brother was led 
to go and speak to this man. For an hour, perhaps 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 51 

two hours, he talked with him ; and he says that he 
nevc-r met with such a mass of infidel objections and 
arguments. No way was made, and it seemed as if 
the whole thing was utterly hopeless. However, my 
brother felt he couldn't give up talking to this man. 
Breathing a prayer for Divine guidance, he turned 
to him again, and said : " Well ; I know that I have 
got a peace that passeth all understanding, and a joy 
that is unspeakable. I can't explain to you how 
great it is." The man was startled. " Have you ?" 
said he ; "you are an awfully lucky fellow. Hun- 
dreds have been seeking that all their lives, and 
haven't found it." And then my brother told him 
that the secret of his peace and joy was a simple 
trust in Jesus, and nothing else ; and told him how 
he could get it. The man began to pour out his 
heart to him. He found the missionary had some- 
thing, he wanted, and he opened up his heart to him 
at once — so much so that my brother asked him then 
and there to decide for Christ. He could not decide 
then, he said. " Go down to your cabin, then," 
said my brother. He went down to his cabin, and 
there and then on his knees 

HE DID ACCEPT THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. 

And the first thing he did was to write home to his 
friends and ask forgiveness for leaving them as he 
had done. Then he publicly bore witness to the 
ship's company. And he mas a witness— he was a 
changed man. He bore testimony out-and-out by a 
changed life, and it stirred the. whole ship— from the 
captain down to the very lowest on the vessel, either 



52 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

as passenger or as servant — just to hear this man, 
and to see the change that the Lord had wrought in 
him. And the last I heard of him was, that he had 
been restored to his position in India as captain of 
a merchant ship, and he was witnessing there for 
the Lord Jesus Christ just the same. So you see 
God thus added His seal to the work of these men. 
And this was not the only man who was saved on 
that ship. There were thirteen second-class passen- 
gers in all ; and every one of these thirteen professed 
to have become Christians before they left the ship. 

At Colombo the missionaries had to change to an- 
other ship. They joined the Verona, and on that 
voyage the presence of the Lord was again manifest. 
There were conversions amongst the men, and one 
of the last things that happened on board the ship 
was this : There was a steward who was sick. My 
brother had a talk with him, and he was stirred. 
That man found Christ ; and bef ore they left the ship 
the Lord had converted also another steward. 

REMARKABLE MEETINGS IN SHANGHAI. 

They came to Shanghai, and my brother caused 
to be given to every one of the stewards and passen- 
gers a copy of Miss Havergal's book, "The Eoyal 
Invitation." You would think that after a month's 
voyage the people of the ship would have become 
pretty tired of the missionaries, for they had all been 
at them, one after the other. Not so. Every one of 
the whole ship's company went to the meetings in 
Shanghai. And they were the most wonderful 
meetings that were ever known in the history of the 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 53 

city. A little while before that Mr. Douglass had 
held some meetings; but they dwindled till they had 
to be given up. The meetings started by the mis- 
sionaries were held every night, and they were held 
not only in one place, but in several halls in different 
parts of the town at the same time. They were held 
every night for about three weeks; and night after 
night the interest increased, and the numbers in- 
creased. On the first Monday night, after my 
brother had been speaking to the people about salva- 
tion, he said he thought that if any one had received 
such a wonderful gift from the Lord Jesus Christ, 
the least he could do would be to confess it; and he 
asked any one there — every one there — who had ac- 
cepted Christ and found in Him a joy and peace that 
they had never found in anything else, to rise and 
say so. He had no sooner done speaking than 

UP JUMPED A CLERGYMAN 

and said he had been a great sinner, and of course 
this startled everybody, for he was the Church of 
England clergyman of the place, and the incumbent 
of the cathedral there, and had been respected by 
everybody. My brother says he never heard such a 
testimony in his life. He told them just shortly and 
simply how he had tried all his life to do his duty, 
how he had taken great interest in his work and 
tried to do everything in the best way; yet, he said, if 
the Lord had called for his soul on Sunday night he 
would have been a lost man. Now he thanked God 
he was saved. He had never spent such a Sunday 
night, lying awake in agony under his deep convic- 



54 KEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

tion of sin. But he had found peace by just trusting 
in Christ as his Lord and his Saviour. The follow- 
ing day there appeared in the Shanghai Courier — 
perhaps the leading paper there — a very bitter article 
cutting up this clergyman — cutting up his testimony, 
and saying it was quite impossible that he should 
continue in the cathedral. Eef erring to my brother, 
it said something to this effect: "Mr. Studd has 
asked the question ' Why should he not have left 
England f As Mr. Studd has asked this question 
we will try to answer it for him. He had no right 
to leave England. He should have considered his 
influence there," and all that. The morality of the 
Chinese, said the editor, was quite as good as that 
of Christian nations. It was a most bitter article, 
and other parts of the paper showed the same spirit. 
Says my brother: "We could not understand it at 
first; but we found a reason for it afterwards. It 
turned out that the editor s wife had been to the 
meetings, and was converted. She told her husband, 
and he was so angry that he sat up and wrote those 
articles for the Shanghai Courier. Well, a day or 
two afterwards the editor himself was induced to 
attend the meetings, and 

HE, TOO, FOUND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. 

Then these missionaries went around to the dif- 
ferent stations, and they had a conference at Gan- 
K'ing, up the Yang-tse river. They had wonderful 
blessings, and the Lord seemed just pouring out 
His Spirit upon all the missionaries, stirring them 
up. Then they separated, and Mr. Stanley Smith went . 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 55 

up to Pekin, while my brother went up the Yang-tse, 
and is now going on up that river. Mr. Stanley 
Smith is doing some remarkable work in gathering 
and uniting the missionaries of the different mis- 
sionary societies together. He started first in Tien- 
tsin to hold a meeting for daily prayer; and the mis- 
sionaries of all the different sects took part in it — 
nearly all. The only one that kept out of it was 
the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowl- 
edge. In Pekin he came across one of the London 
missionaries — a physician who was very able, and 
had the entree into the palace of the leading man- 
practically the King — of Chi-Li, on account of his 
knowledge and skill. Mr. Stanley Smith and this 
medical man got talking about faith-healing. The 
medical man was not clear about it, yet he was in- 
terested in the subject. He thought man ought to 
use the means God had put at his disposal; but 
wherever man could not do anything, there faith-heal- 
ing was a legitimate recourse. And as he was tak- 
ing Mr. Stanley Smith with him on his rounds, he 
came up to a man suffering from epileptic fits. Said 
he: "Now, there is a proper case for faith-healing. I 
can do nothing for that man." Mr. Stanley Smith 
said: "Let us get down and pray about him." 
They knelt down there, putting their hands upon 
him and praying — just believing in the Lord for this 
man. And the next day that man was at the 
meetings. In a week 

HE WAS PERFECTLY WHOLE, 

and he has been whole ever since. This was one of 
the results of the work there. 



56 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

Well, then; I have had some very interesting 
letters from my brother. His party is going up the 
river Han. The Chinese sometimes call the mission- 
aries " Jesus Christ disciples," but more generally 
" foreign devils." The people are intensely curious 
to see them. They can't show their faces at all. If 
they go out they are followed by about two hundred 
people all around them. If a ship anchors, people 
put their sticks in the port-hole, and if the mission- 
aries put up curtains to hide themselves they won't 
take that for an answer, but dig with their sticks 
till they have got a hole, and get a good stare. My 
brother was very much struck with the fact that 
these men are all religious. Before they leave port 
with a ship they offer sacrifice, and never start with- 
out sacrificing a rooster. It is very extraordinary to 
find the old ceremonies in the Bible out there. As 
one letter after another comes to me from my 
brother, each is more full of joy than the other. His 
only regret is that he hadn't gone out sooner. 

OUR DUTY AT HOME. 

Now, what can we do ? Well, I will tell you what 
we are doing in England. We don't forget to pray 
for the missionaries. They are always wanting 
prayer. Missionaries are exposed to temptations 
such as our life is not. It is not all easy after they 
have cut themselves off from the world, as we are 
apt to suppose. The world follows them in their 
hearts, and they want prayer for power to conquer 
the superstitions with which they come in contact. 
Some of us have started a meeting in London every 



NEW INTEREST— FOREIGN MISSIONS. 57 

Wednesday. We meet together on Wednesday at five 
o'clock for one hour, and engage in prayer for those 
men. Then there is another thing. Mr. Moody 
showed you yesterday a text (referring to a beautiful 
piece of needlework) which was done by a lady who 
was a cripple. She wanted very much to do some- 
thing for the work, and her part was this. Many of 
your ladies here can work these texts, and they will 
do a great deal of good. And then again, a gentle- 
man has written and persuaded a hundred people to re- 
member those missionaries in prayer every Saturday, 
and so these hundred people pray, and we have this 
meeting on Monday as well. And so I think that 
here in America some of you could start a meeting, 
just praying for these missionaries and other mis- 
sionaries all over the world, and asking the Lord for 
the power of the Holy Spirit upon them. Some of 
us will probably find in our prayers we are sent out 
ourselves. Well, we shall thank God if we are. 
But anyway, let us join our prayers to the prayers 
of those who are already beseeching God in behalf of 
those missionaries, asking Him for fresh power, that 
He may keep them and bless them. 

REMARKS BY MR. MOODY. 

Mr. Moody exhibited a photograph of the seven 
missionaries in Chinese costume, saying: " These 
men have taken the costume of the country while 
they are there. They are picked men every one of 
them. They are leaders of society, and held posi- 
tions very high. It seems to me we are getting 
back to apostolic times. Now let us bow our heads 



58 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

and pray for these seven missionaries. Let there be 
just one cry going up to God for these seven men." 
Dr. Pierson led in prayer. 

Mr. Moody said: "I suppose, friends, you see 
where this dear brother got his power. It was in 
those ten days alone with God; and how that ought 
to encourage us to get along with God and get 
power. I don't believe it is the mind of God we 
should be toiling all night and catching nothing. 
I don't believe it is the mind of God we should 
be praying and working without results. I be- 
lieve what God did for that young man He will 
do for us. Speaking of the work at Cambridge, I 
don't think the preaching had anything to do with 
it. We received a pressing invitation — Mr. Sankey 
and I — to go to Cambridge when we were in Eng- 
land ten years ago, and I refused. I thought I had 
got no call to go to universities. But when we were 
over there again, another call came, signed by a list 
of names six or eight feet long; and I said: 'I will 
go.' The first Sunday night we were in Cambridge 
the students tried to break the meeting up. I had 
preached to all classes of people — to the hoodlums of 
Calif ornia — and never had that happen before. It 
looked very much as if they were going to snatch 
the whole thing out of our hands. I don't believe 
there were fifty students out of that roomful that 
heard the songs of Mr. Sankey, and right on through 
the whole meeting it was just the same. On Monday 
night the disturbance was just as bad, or worse. On 
Tuesday the outlook was darker than ever. But on 
that day a lady — a bedridden saint — who was very 



NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 59 

much interested in the work, sent around an invita- 
tion to a few Christians to get together in a little 
upper room and plead with God for a change in 
those students. That turned the tide. It wasn't 
the preaching. They had heard better sermons. 
They had had sermons from the best preach- 
ers of the Church of England. It was those Chris- 
tians in that upper room praying with God that 
made the difference. And how they did pray? 
It seemed as if their prayers burst into Heaven, 
and I said, 'The victory is ours.' That night I 
preached. I don't think I had much power. 
When I ask, ' If any man in this audience wants to 
become a Christian, will you go into the inquiry 
room?' — they had their gowns on — of course they 
were known — if you know anything about univer- 
sities you know it is pretty hard to get them moved. 
When I gave this invitation I didn't know there 
would be a man. But there was a hush over that 
audience, and 

FIFTY-TWO MEN SPRANG TO THEIR FEET, 

and went up in that gallery, and that night we had 
all the inquirers we could attend to. About one 
o'clock — I was getting pretty tired — a man came to 
me, saying, 'I wish you would come and talk to 
this man.' They were on their faces, crying to God 
for mercy. God had broken not only their stubborn 
wills, but their hearts were broken. It wasn't the 
preaching; the preaching was pretty weak that 
night. I talked to this man, and the tears were 
running down his cheeks; but he found Christ that 



60 NEW INTEREST — FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

night. Some one said to me, ' Do you know who 
that was ? That is the head wrangler in Cambridge/ 
the highest in books. Among the three thousand 
students at Cambridge he was the best — the leader. 
There he was on his knees, and the power of God 
just came in answer to prayer. Next Sunday night 
there were two hundred or three hundred broken 
hearts, of men who wanted to be for God. 

"It isn't preaching we want; it is prayer. I 
would rather be able to pray like David than to 
preach with the eloquence of Gabriel. We don't 
want any more preachers in this country — we have 
got enough. What we want is to pray. Let us 
open up communication with Heaven, and the bless- 
ing will come down." 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 61 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS? 

At the close of Mr. Moody's address on Thursday 
forenoon, Dr. Pierson, of Philadelphia, at his re- 
quest, followed for ten minutes. Isaiah, said he, is 
divided in the original, into three portions, each end- 
ing with a mournful refrain concerning the wicked. 
These refrains will be found at the end of the forty- 
eighth chapter; of the fifty-seventh, and of the 
whole book. When God divided the book into three 
portions he must have meant something; and so in 
the center of the middle portion we find that won- 
derful piece of poetry, the crown-jewel, the blood- 
red ruby, the fifty-third chapter. In the British 
Navy there is a scarlet thread running through every 
line of cordage, and though a rope be cut into inch 
pieces, it can be recognized as belonging to the 
Government. So is there a scarlet thread running 
all through the Bible; the whole book points to 
Christ. In the promise made to Adam, appears, as 
it were, the first twig of a tree. Twig after twig is 
added, till we can count not only two hundred direct 
promises of the Messiah, but fifteen hundred direct 
and indirect. Then, as history comes to fulfill these 
predictions, each little twig in turn is set on fire, yet not 
consumed, till finally the whole tree becomes a great 
burning bush, and we takeoff our shoes and stand 



62 THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 

in awe, for it is holy ground. The speaker was born 
in a Christian family, father and mother Christians, 
a brother a minister, a sister married to a minister. 
He was educated for the ministry, and entered it not 
fully conscious of his responsibility. His first pas- 
torate was among a very hornet's nest of infidels. 
They talked with him and lent him books. Having 
imbibed his belief merely from his Christian sur- 
roundings, as a matter of tradition, he was unable 
to meet this onset. His faith in the inspiration of 
the Bible, in the Divinity of Christ, and in his own 
salvation, was shaken, till he became alarmed. 
Then he went over the wiiole ground, getting down 
to the very foundation, and it was not long till he 
not only believed more firmly than ever, but knew 
why. 

In the afternoon the subject was the Bible, and 
how to use it. Mr. L. D. Wishard, General College 
Young Men's Christian Association Secretary, spoke 
first for a few minutes. If the Bible, he said, is 
the sword of the Spirit, we ought to use it as a 
sword. When an infidel makes light of the Word 
of God, stick it right into him. If he doesn't mind 
it much, keep on — stick it in harder and harder. As 
the Duke of Wellington said, the side will win that 
can keep on hammering longest. 

HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

The Eev. Wm. Walton Clark, of Staten Island, 
then offered a few "Helpful Suggestions in Bible 
Study." The following were his points, each of 
which was amplified with copious citations from 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 63 

Scripture: 1. Study, believing that God will reward 
us. In proportion as we diligently seek God through 
His Word, will He reward our efforts. 2. Study, 
believing the Holy Ghost is our Teacher. He who 
wrote the Word is most competent to teach it. It is 
one thing to be familiar with the geography, chron- 
ology, and history of the Bible; it is another to 
understand its underlying spiritual principles? Man 
can teach much that is on the surface, but only the 
Holy Ghost can teach the deep hidden things of God. 
3. Study to find Christ in all the Scriptures. Each 
book in the Bible has Christ for its centre and object. 
The disciples thought they knew the Scriptures? but 
they did not see Jesus in them, for the Lord rebuked 
them for their failure in this very particular. 4. Study, 
believing that all Scripture is fully and equally in- 
spired. The great theological question of the day is 
whether the Bible is wholly inspired, partly inspired, 
or not inspired at all. Even among theologians 
there is a great difference of opinion; and as these 
opinions are ventilated in the secular and religious 
press, it is our duty to look into the question deeply, 
that we may not only be convinced ourselves, but be 
able to convince others also. We believe in the full 
verbal inspiration of Holy Writ ; that the Scriptures 
as they originally came from the hands of the writers 
were in truth "God- breathed" (2 Tim. hi, 16, IT). 
Bishop Ryle says: "Give me the plenary verbal 
theory with all its difficulties, rather than the doubt. 
I accept the difficulties, and humbly wait for their 
solution; but while I wait I am standing on a rock/ 1 
Let a man become weak on inspiration, and he will 



64 THE BOOK OF BOOKS. I 

surely slide further and further from the truth. 
5. Study, believing that all Scripture was written 
for us ; designed for our personal benefit and growth 
in grace. Paul says, in Bom. xv, 4, that these 
things were written for our learning, that we might 
have hope. Again, in 1 Cor. x, 11, he says, after 
giving an outline of events in the history of Israel : 
" All these things happened unto them for ensamples, 
and they are written for our admonition." This his- 
tory, then, has a present value for our souls. 6. Study, 
to learn the scope of truth, its range and design. As 
we take up each portion, let us inquire, What was 
the design of God in writing this particular book ? 
For what special purpose was this Gospel, Epistle, or 
prophecy written ? And we often find the key to the 
book in the first verse, as in Isaiah, Matthew, John, 
and Revelation. Ascertain the design. Genesis is a 
book of beginnings; Exodus, of redemptions; Levit- 
icus, of sacrifice and priesthood; Numbers, of walk 
in the wilderness; Deuteronomy, of conduct for 
Canaan; Joshua, of warfare. Miles Coverdale says, 
in the preface of his Bible of 1535: "It will greatly 
help you to imderstand Scripture if you mark not 
only what is written, but of whom, and to whom; 
with what words, at what time, where, of what in- 
tent, with what circumstances, considering that 
which goes before and that which follows." 7. 
Eightly divide the Word of Truth. There is an old 
Latin proverb: "Distinguish the periods, and the 
Scriptures will harmonize. 55 We must see the diner- 
ance between the dispensations of law and of grace; 
between the earthly blessings in the Old Testament 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 6S 

and the spiritual blessings in the New. Let the 
student locate in each dispensation — past, present 
and future — such portions of Scripture as belong to 
it; then will the revealed Word harmonize, and the 
word of prophecy become more sure. 

The Eev. S. H. Pratt, evangelist, recommended 
marking one's Bible with marginal notes, so as to 
make the great truths stand out prominently. Illu- 
minated minds displayed the choicest texts in bright 
colors, and on this principle should we render salient 
the passages of special importance. The Eev. C. M. 
Southgate, of Worcester, strongly recommended 
studying the Bible, book by book. Dr. Pierson re- 
ferred to the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, 
pointing out that it is a sacred acrostic, divided into 
sections according to the letters of the Hebrew 
alphabet, each section containing eight verses, and 
each of those verses beginning in the Hebrew with 
the letter of that section. This he took to indicate 
that all literature cannot express the Word of God. 
See the numerous synonyms in this Psalm for 
"word." Get at the specific aim of each book. The 
key to Hebrews is " better" (xi, 40). The key to 
Ecclesiastes is, that man is too big for the world. 
From the earthly point of view alone, his life is a 
failure. There must be the spiritual half -hinge, or 
hemisphere, to join with the earthly half -hinge, or 
hemisphere, that will round out the whole. 

THE RISEN CHRIST. 

On Friday, the Eev. Dr. Gordon, of Boston, spoke 
in the forenoon on " The Risen Life of Christ." The 



66 THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 

Bible, he said, sets forth with much fullness the 
present life of Christ — Hebrews and Eevelation being 
especially rich concerning it. The first phase of the 
present life of Christ is the fact that He is seated. 
That is His attitude because His work is finished. 
The only place where the risen Lord is not repre- 
sented as seated is at the stoning of Stephen. Stephen 
sees Him standing, and it would seem as if He had 
risen from His seat to behold the first martyrdom. 
At such a sight He could not sit still. Always, else- 
where, however, He is seated. This is of interest to 
us, because it would appear to render Him more 
accessible. If you go to a man at his office, in busi- 
ness hours, you will find him very busy; hardly able 
to spare you a minute. But take him when his work 
is finished, at home, seated by his fireside, and how 
much more likely are you to gain his ear! The Jews 
observed the Passover with sandals on their feet, 
loins girded, and staff in hand; but the Lord's 
Supper of the present dispensation is partaked of 
seated, because of Christ's finished work. This 
shows the significance of even little things in the 
ceremonies and forms of the Old and New Testa- 
ments. The second phase of the risen life of Christ 
is His attitude of expectation — expecting the King- 
dom. He is seated at the right hand of God till the 
Kingdom shall be delivered to Him. As in other 
places, we have fellowship with Him in that. The 
third phase is His attitude of rest. " There remain- 
eth a rest for the people of God." There are two 
rests: the rest of grace and the rest of glory. The 
rest of grace is that which belongs to the believer, 



THE LOOK OF BOOKS. 67 

because the grace of God is doing for him in Christ 
what he could not do for himself. But the rest of 
glory is the rest that comes to the toil-worn child of 
God, who has been working with all his might, not 
that he may be saved, but because he is saved. We 
are to be rewarded for our works. A man cannot 
be rewarded for what he never performed. Christ 
wrought our salvation. The reward hence refers 
exclusively to the labor of the dutiful child of God 
seeking to do the will of Christ. Another phase is, 
that; Christ is confessing us before the Father. Let 
it be clearly understood that w^e can and do make it 
hard for Christ to confess us. For as the devil of old 
came into the presence of God accusing Job, so now 
the devil in a sense enters the courts of Heaven ac- 
cusing us before the Father. Here is some poor, 
trembling, faltering sinner, who walks unworthy of 
the vocation w^hereunto he is called. The devil 
comes before God, and says: "Ah, yes; that is one 
of Yours — who promised to serve You and be faith- 
ful, and yet see how he is living." Christ's reply is, 
"Well, he has confessed Me before men, and I 
promised to confess him before My Father. Yes; he 
is one of Mine, and I am hoping that this and that 
will remove every trace of evil." It is a hard thing 
for Christ to confess us in the face of our many in- 
consistencies, but He is faithful to His promise. The 
last phase is Christ interceding for us. "If any 
man sin we have an advocate," etc. "He ever 
liveth," etc. 

The Rev. W. W. Clark spoke briefly on the rela- 
tion between cross and crown. Only by bearing our 



68 THE BOOK OF EOOKS. 

cross can we hope to be with Christ in glory. Mr. 
Moody said: " That reminds me cf a story. A young 
man once gave a discourse, in the presence of a good 
old bishop, telling how he had been in Palestine, 
and stopped at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Bethany, and 
ever so many places where Christ was. There was 
a silence of a moment, when the old bishop rose and 
said, ' I'd rather be five minutes with Christ than a 
year in places where He once was.' " 

Dr. Pentecost dwelt a moment on the fact that 
we are members of the body of Christ. He took our 
nature, and we share His triumph over the grave. 

HARMONY OF THE BIBLE. 

In the afternoon the Eev. Mr. Clark gave an 
address on the development of doctrine concerning 
Christ in the Gospels. In Matthew we see Him as 
the Messiah; in Mark, as a servant; in Luke, as the 
Son of Man; in John, as the Son of God. Messiah- 
ship, service, humanity, Christianity. Thus we can 
go through the whole New Testament. 

Dr. Gordon then spoke. Man, he said, is forgiven 
in the New Testament on different ground from that 
in the Old. In the Old Testament it was because 
He is merciful. He had made a covenant of mercy. 
Plence the prophet could appeal to Him not to dis- 
grace the throne of His glory (see Jer. xiv, 20, 21); 
,( We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, and 
the iniquity of our fathers; for we have sinned 
against Thee. Do not abhor us, for Thy name's 
sake; do not disgrace the throne of Thy glory; 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 69 

remember, break not the throne of Thy covenant 
with us. " But in the New Testament the forgiveness 
of sins is based on God's justice. Christ has paid the 
penalty and satisfied the law, and now God forgives 
sin because He is just. "He is faithful and just to 
forgive us our sins." If He should fail to forgive a 
man in the present dispensation who asks for pardon 
in Christ's name, He would disgrace His throne. 
Another difference between the Old and the New 
Testaments, is that under the old dispensation a man 
was righteous at the end of works and sacrifices; 
under the new, Christ having done all, he is right- 
eous at the beginning, and thence proceeds to work 
on. It is now possible to be righteous at the begin- 
ning of one's life rather than at the end of it. Again, 
in the Old Testament man repented and then was for- 
given. Now he is forgiven already, and the repent- 
ance comes afterwards. A man once was convicted 
and sentenced to death. A friend interceded, and 
procured a pardon from the Governor. Taking it to 
the prison, before showing it, he asked the con- 
demned man what he would do if he got free. In a 
rage he said he would shoot the judge who sentenced 
him, and the false witnesses who testified against 
him. Sorrowfully turning away, the friend went 
out with the pardon still in his pocket, and tore it up. 
The man was pardoned, but he would not repent, 
and the pardon could not be applied. Christ expiated 
the sins of the world on the Cross, and God was 
reconciled to us. Now the message is: "Be ye 
reconciled to God." The idea that we have to go 
through a long course of repentance keeps back too 



70 THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 

many. All we have to do is to accept the salvation 
already purchased and now offered. 

Dr. Pierson said the unity of the Bible was that of 
an organic body: the smallest part could not be 
destroyed without destroying the symmetry of the 
whole. The Bible is one grand orchestral chorus, in 
which the various singers pursue a succession of 
parts, closing in one great burst of melody from 
Heaven and earth combined in the apocalypse. 

Dr. Pentecost emphasized the amazing love of 
God to us in that, without waiting for our repent- 
ance, He prepared the conditions for our pardon, and 
then sent the good news of salvation. How did we 
receive that message? We even killed Him who 
brought it. Even in the Old Testament may be seen 
this abounding love: " Because the Lord loved you." 
(Deut. vii, 7, 8.) He accomplished redemption. The 
work of Christ is finished and perfect. Why not 
accept it? 

At the evening meeting in East Hall, Dr. Pierson 
said: What is the matter with our churches? The 
trouble is, in too many of them, the truth from 
Heaven is obscured by windows of man's device, and 
turned into "dim, religious light." These windows 
are carved, and stained, and decorated till the light 
cannot get through. We ought to be uncolored 
panes of glass, through which the light can freely 
pass. When he was a pastor in Detroit, on a lovely 
November evening, in one of the leading churches 
in the city, distinguished for wealth and culture, 
there were only twenty-five persons around the 
preacher. The same state of affairs prevailed in 



THE BOOK OF BOOKS. 71 

Philadelphia to an alarming extent. Bethany 
Church, however, had always been filled since it 
was founded. The remedy for empty churches, he 
believed, is to give the people God's Word. 



72 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS GOSPEL 

TENTS— MR. MOODY ON SINGING — A 
CLUSTER OF SERMONS. 



"the three-fold SONSHIP." 
On Saturday forenoon, the Rev. Dr. Gordon, of 
Boston, spoke on "The Three-Fold Sonship." The 
miracle of all miracles, he said, is our becoming the 
sons of God. One way to realize our relation as such 
is to follow the life of Jesus Christ Himself. What- 
ever is true of Christ is true of every believer — of the 
body of Christ. Then open the Scriptures. John 
says Christ was the only-begotten Son of God. This 
was true when John so wrote; it isn't true now. 
Afterwards Christ is spoken of as the first-begotten—* 
the first-begotten among many brethren. God has 
appointed Him heir of all things, but He won't have 
the inheritance alone; we are heirs with Him. Is it 
not remarkable that the Gospel of John opens with 
Jesus Christ in the bosom of the Father, and closes 
with John in the bosom of the Master — the sinner 
in the bosom of the Saviour ? 

BEGOTTEN OF GOD. 

First: Christ, as the Son of God, was begotten of 
the Holy Ghost. Said the Angel to Mary: "The 
power of the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee .... 
therefore that holy thing which shall be born of thee 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 73 

shall be called the Son of God." Yet, notwithstanding 
it was announced He was to be the Son of God, 
during all the days of His youth and early manhood 
there wasn't a single person who knew Him as the 
Son of God. Who would be most likely to know ? 
John the Baptist, son of prayer, did you know He 
was the Son of God ? " I knew Him not; but when I 
saw the Holy Spirit resting upon Him, then I knew." 
John the Evangelist, you have written a great deal 
about Him, what did you know ? "He was in the 
world .... and the world knew Him not." Did 
His mother know % Finding Him in the Temple, she 
said, "Son" — she knew He was her son; but when 
He said, " Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father's business ?" she understood not the saying 
which He spake. Up to the time of His public bap- 
tism Jesus Christ was in the world as the Son of 
God, and the world knew Him not. In this we are 
like Him. 1 John hi, 1: " Behold, what manner of 
love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we 
should be called the sons of God: therefore the world 
knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." Leavitt 
said: " The world knoweth us not because we are 
children of a king. They don't understand the court 
language." We are sons of God because, like Christ, 
begotten of the Holy Ghost. "Except a man be born 
again," etc. Heaven is our home. There is a beau- 
tiful kind of water-insect whose natural home is on 
the earth, but which goes down and feeds at the 
bottom of the lakes. It carries with it a certain 
amount of atmospheric air, enough to last an hour 
or two; and so while it is down there in the mud it 



74 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

is all the time breathing the upper air. Jesus came 
down here, but all the while He breathed the air of 
Heaven. So it is with us. Lady Powerscourt said: 
" The Christian is not looking up from earth to 
Heaven; he is looking down from Heaven to earth." 
That little insect was surrounded by marine animals, 
living and breathing from the water, but the insect 
breathed a very different air. Our citizenship, our 
home, our life, is in Heaven. "Now are we the 
sons of God." So far as salvation is concerned, the 
Scripture knows nothing of future texts. " Ye are 
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citi- 
zens." You are just as truly sols of God the moment 
you believe on Christ, as you ever will be. No mat- 
ter whether the world knows it or not. Many years 
ago, one of the kings of England was in exile. One 
night sleeping in a hay-mow, another night cooking 
his own supper; yet all the time son of a king, having 
the right to sit on the throne. Nobody knew him, 
but he was just as truly the son of a king. 

DIVINELY CERTIFIED. 

Secondly : Christ was witnessed. " The Holy 
Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon 
Him; and a voice came from Heaven, which said, 
' Thou art My beloved Son ; in Thee I am well pleased. " 
At last God, before witnesses, declares Jesus Christ 
to be His Son. Satan is a liar from the beginning. 
It is his point when God says anything to contradict 
it. So the first thing he does is to say to Christ: 
"If Thou be the Son of God." Perhaps he wouldn't 
say he didn't believe it, but he was bound to dispute 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. To 

it. Satan started to discuss this point, and there- 
after the discussion went on. [Mr. Moody — "It is 
going on yet.''] Even when Christ went to His 
death, the controversy was: " If Thou be the Son of 
God, come down from the Cross. " The people wagged 
their heads, saying: " Let Him save Himself now, if 
He be the Son of God. 5 ' He was condemned on the 
ground of blasphemy, because He declared Himself 
to be the Son of God. Some people believed he was 
the Son of God, but the great mass did not. Yet He 
was attested as such by the Holy Ghost. John vi, 
27: " For Him hath God the Father sealed." In the 
Mosaic ritual the lamb of the sacrifice was stamped 
and sealed by the priest as fit for the purpose. Jesus 
was to be offered up. The Father looked down and 
said: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. There is no spot in Him." And so the 
Father sealed Him. The lamb had to be eaten also. 
" Of this Bread if any man eat he shall not hunger." 
We also are sealed by the Holy Ghost. Gal. iv, 6: 
" Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit 
of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father." 

THE GLORIOUS MANIFESTATON. 

Third : Christ was manifested. In Eomans i, 3, 
4, we find this remarkable statement : " Concerning 
His Son Jesus Christ . . . declared to bo the Son 
of God with power, according to the spirit of holi- 
ness, by the resurrection of the dead." This was 
the manifestation of Christ in power. He had been 
in power before. When about to be crucified He 
declared that He could summon more than twelve 



70 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

legions of angels. But after His resurrection He 
was ready to demonstrate His Sonship. He said, 
' ■ All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in 
earth." He was bidding them to go into all the 
world, and preach the Gospel unto every creature. 
"Who am I ? One who has all power, and I am 
ready to use it now." He was to sit on the throne, 
and put Himself in communication with His disci- 
ples. To them He said, "Ye shall receive power, 
after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. The 
works that I do shall ye do, and greater* works 
shall ye do." " Every knee shall bow," etc. There 
is a wonderful truth in Romans viii, 22: "The 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth. . . '. Even 
"we ourselves groan within ourselves." We are 
going to be manifested. The sons of God will be 
manifested in the fullness of time. A great many 
went into martyrs' graves — persecuted, condemned, 
though the world was not worthy of them — but their 
day is coming. There are a great many hidden 
saints who are never recognized, but by-and-by they 
will be manifested. They will sit with Christ on 
His throne, sharers with Him in His power. The 
other day an old buried cask that had been twenty 
years under ground, was dug up, and thrown aside. 
At night a great crowd was noticed looking curi- 
ously at something. What was it ? That old cask 
had become phosphorescent. Every stave looked as 
if cf silver. That old rotten, decayed barrel that 
we threw away in the day j^ime, at night came out 
luminous as the sun, in the sight of a great crowd 
of people. So it will be in the resurrection. In a 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 77 

moment the saints — given up to decay, having seen 
corruption — will start up from the grave to put in 
their glorious bodies. That will be the day of their 
manifestation as the sons of God. The righteous 
shall shine as the sun hi the kingdom of the Father. 
This, then, is the Three-fold Sonship. I, John hi, 
2 : " Beloved, now are we the sons of God ; and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know 
that when He shall be manifested (Revised Version), 
we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 
Whnn He is manifested, we shall be manifested. 
Col. iii, 3, 4 : "For ye are dead, and your life is hid 
with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, 
shall be manifested (Revised Version), then shall we 
also, with Him, be manifested in glory." My heart 
melts within me at the wonderful grace, the wonder- 
ful elevation. It was a great condescension for Jesus 
Christ to become the Son of Man — born of a woman; 
but the greatest wonder is man being begotten of 
God, and being made partaker of the Divine nature. 
It is a great and wonderful truth that God has walked 
this earth; it is not a less wonderful truth that to-day 
there is a Man on the Throne. 

FURTHER REMARKS. 

The volunteer choir sang, " Beloved, Now are We 
the Sons of God." At Mr. Moody's instance, the 
] ymn was repeated a few times, till all were familiar 
with it, and could sing it in a spirited manner. Mr. 
Moody then said : "I wish we had more liberty in 
our churches, so that when we had a subject, we 
could take a new hymn and practice it over and over 



78 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

again till we all knew it. You didn't know that 
hymn before, but you caught it up in five minutes. 
A great many people would be shocked if we did 
that in a church service, but it is worth while to spend 
five minutes that way now and then, in the regular 
service. It is the only time you can get the people 
together. W.e wa-nt to .break up these forms, and 
during the service if the subject suggests a new 
hymn, just teach ii to the people right on the spot, 
and send them away with it ringing in their minds. 
I don't know that we could have followed up Dr. 
Gordon's address any better than by learning that 
hymn. Perhaps many of you didn't take up all he 
said, but in the song you get the essence of it." 

Mr. Geo. C. Needham referred to the responsibility 
attached to sonship in God. As we are like Christ 
in the several phases of His Sonship, so we must 
strive to imitate Him in our daily lives. 

Dr. Pierson expatiated on the opening verses of the 
fourth chapter of Galatians, in which Paul shows 
tha.t an heir during childhood diff ereth nothing from 
a servant though he be lord of all; but when the 
fullness of time is come he is recognized as a son. 
In Roman usages, when a son became of age, he 
was brought into the agora, or market-place, and 
there by his father publicly invested with the toga 
prcetenta, or toga virilis (the manly toga). Sometimes 
also the father placed on the shoulders of the son a 
tunic as a mark of special favor. The people of 
Galatia were familiar with this custom, which afford- 
ed a beautiful illustration of the double investment 
of the children of God; first, in being recognized as 



PRIVILEGES GF BELIEVERS. 79 

the sons of God; and second, in being baptized by the 
Holy Spirit. The New Testament speaks of our 
Lord in seven phases : Christ prophesied, anointed, 
crucified, risen, ascended, glorified, and coming. In 
each one of these phases we share his life. But the 
future glory must follow a double crucifixion. We 
must hold the things of the world in contempt; we 
must submit to being held in- contempt by the world. 
But the resurrection assures us of final triumph. 
Before Christ rose from the dead the grave was a 
dark chasm — only open on one side, the side of earth. 
But Jesus Christ made a hole on the other side of the 
grave, and turned the chasm into a tunnel; and now 
the light streams through from the heavenward side. 
Mr. Moody said it was singular Dr. Pierson closed 
as he did, for at that moment the last solemn proces- 
sion was marching in New York to the tomb of Gen- 
eral Grant. He thought they should spend fifteen 
minutes in prayer for the bereaved family. At his 
request prayer was then led by the Hon. J. M. S. 
Williams, of Cambridge, Mass., Major Joseph Har- 
die, of Selma, Alabama, and Dr. Gordon. 

MR. MGODY ON SINGING 

In the afternoon Mr. Moody began with some 
further remarks about singing. He said: I got a 
letter since this morning saying that the Mizpah 
band of Glasgow, formed in 1882, is larger to-day 
than ever. When we were in Glasgow there were 
about one thousand men converted who had been 
slaves of strong drink, and the question was, how to 
hold them together. They were organized into a 



80 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

band, called themselves the Mizpah band, and met 
every Saturday. That is the time of peculiar tempt- 
ation in the old countries — the men are paid off 
generally that day; and the week's wages generally 
went into whiskey. These men thought they would 
be tried and tempted on Saturday; so they voted 
that they would meet every Saturday afternoon. 
Then the question came up, What would bind them 
together? They decided that they would start a male 
choir. They began with a choir of four hundred; 
and out of those there weren't perhaps more than a 
dozen could sing. If you had heard them you 
wouldn't have thought it was singing. It sounded 
like old cracked kettles and tin pans. Their voices 
hadn't been worn down. But it kept them oft* the 
corners and out of the whiskey-shops. And they 
went on practicing and improving, till, in six months, 
when Mr. Sankey and I went back to Glasgow, I 
never heard such singing. They have kept on grow- 
ing, and now they number over one thousand one 
hundred. Those men go out every week to the 
different parts of Glasgow, some to preach the best 
they know how, others to tell what God has done 
for them, and others to sing; and thus in one way 
and another, they declare the Gospel. 

I mention this to bring out this fact: that a great 
deal of talent in all our churches lies buried. Utilize 
it. I think a male choir is a good thing. Let the 
boys get together and practice, and then use them 
in the churches. I think there is no singing we can 
have that will take hold of us more than these hymns 
sung by a choir like this (the male choir of the Boys' 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 81 

School), and they have only been practicing two or 
three weeks. They don't sing in an unknown 
tongue. In a great many churches you don't know 
for the life of you what they are singing about. I 
have been in churches where if you tried to follow 
the choir in your hymn book, you couldn't find the 
place. They might as well have sung in Greek or 
Latin. The music covered up the words. The mass 
of the people want words. They don't care about 
the music — it's the words. What we want is singing 
that will bring out the Gospel in such shape that 
the people won't forget it. Dr. Gordon spoke this 
morning on our being sons of God. and then that 
hymn, " Beloved, Now are We the Sons of God," 
came right in to clinch the sermon. I hope this 
question of singing will be looked into. A great 
many of you are representatives of churches. Do 
you get good music ? Get the young people to sing, 
and in that way you will waken up a fresh interest. 
I believe it is easier for a man to preach after you 
have good live singing. I have been in churches where 
the choir would sing something in an unknown 
tongue, and then I would be too upset to preach. I 
would have the programme all laid out before me, 
but after that singing I would say to myself, " I 
am not fit to preach." The choir put me all out 
of sorts. Then I would give out " Rock of Ages," 
cr something like that, so that everybody could sing; 
but the choir would find music to cover even that 
up. What we want is a revolution in our churches 
in this matter of singing. Get words and music that 
the people can understand. Have solos, duets, quar- 



82 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

tettes, a male choir, every kind of a choir you can 
get together. It is always a sign of backsliding 
when people don't sing. You never have a revival 
without singing. The nearer a man gets to God the 
more he wants to sing. I can't sing very well with 
my lips, but I can sing in my heart. I want to see 
new life in the singing in all our churches. 

Dr. Pierson told a story of a certain choir which 
performed an anthem with all the ah's, and eye's and 
aw's. At its conclusion the minister offered the 
following prayer: u 0h, Lord; we suppose that Thou, 
being omniscient, knowest what this choir hath sung; 
but as for us, we have not understood one blessed 
word." 

MR. PRATT ON GOSPEL TENT WORK. 

Rev. S. H. Pratt, of Springfield, Mass., who has 
just closed a remarkably successful season at Pitts- 
field, and whose tent, " Glad Tidings," was in use on 
the Seminary grounds, then spoke on the advantages 
of tent work. He was led, he said, some time ago 
to consider how the summer could be utilized for 
God's work. Many church people, if you propose 
work in summer, say, u Oh, we can't do anything 
now. People won't come. We'll have a better 
chance at them in the fall or after the Week of 
Prayer." They really think it is presumptuous to 
attempt to save people in the summer time. He 
wanted to bear testimony to the fact that he had 
found God as able to save in August as in January. 
He commenced about eight years ago holding meet- 
ings of six, seven, or eight weeks in a city. In most 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 83 

of the places all the churches united. The advan- 
tages of this kind of work are: 

First, A large class attend who cannot get away 
from home. Two-thirds of the people can't get 
away in summer. Why not bring some of the privi- 
leges of a convention like this to the hard-working 
people ? In a tent they can enjoy quickening ser- 
vices at the end of their daily toil. Most church people 
like some kind of a change in summer. A good 
deacon said in his church there were not more than 
twenty-five out to prayer- meeting. Then suppose 
all the churches unite and have a Gospel tent during 
July and August ? Instead of twenty-five or thirty, 
there will be one thousand people during the week 
and two thousand on Sunday night. If you get 
eight hundred, that eight hundred will draw five 
hundred more. People want to go where the people 
are. Instead of small, sickly prayer-meetings, you 
will have crowds, and a quickening influence in the 
community, right in the summer time. 

Then, we can reach the class of people in all our 
cities and villages who will not come into our 
churches. And this class is very large. Something 
must be done to reach the people. A minister once 
said: " They can come and hear me preach. If they 
don't want to come let them be damned." /believe 
we ought to go to them. They are not commanded 
to come to the Church. The Church is commanded 
to go to the people. Christ said to the woman at 
the well that the time was coming when " neither 
in this mountain nor in Jerusalem 5 ' should men 
worship God — they were to worship Him in spirit 



84 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

and in truth anywhere. There is too much contro- 
versy about places to-day. Some people ask: " How 
do the tent converts hold out? 5 How do the con- 
verts in a Gothic church hold out? If a man is con- 
verted by God, he will hold out whether it is UBcler 
the canvas or in a cathedral. A man born of God is 
a son of God, and never less than that. We are in 
peril of becoming formalists, and connecting our 
religious work with certain places. We must go 
anywhere— on Boston Common, as Dr. Gordon did, 
or on the highway. If we have prejudices against 
going out of church, the people we want to reach 
have their prejudices too, and prejudices that are 
well grounded. They are prejudiced against our 
church system. They are not prejudiced against 
compassion, sympathy, the pure Gospel; but they 
are prejudiced against our formalism and the 
system of running our churches. When you in- 
vite them to a free place, and just pour the com- 
passion of the Lord Jesus Christ upon them, 
these prejudices are melted away. The masses are 
not skeptical. So far as they are they have been 
made skeptical by the way the work has been car- 
ried on. In New York city the class that is in the 
greatest need to-day is the middle class. There is a 
great deal of work being done for the lowest class. 
The neglected class to-day is the middle class — re- 
spectable men and women who earn their living 
and can support the Church. There are churches 
for the wealthy, and mission institutions for the 
poor; but for this respectable middle class there is 1:0 
special provision made. This class can be reached- 






PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 85 

They come by scores and hundreds to the tent in 
summer, and the rink or hall in winter. And one 
of the first evidences of their conversion is that they 
have a desire to join themselves with God's people. 
They would never want to go near a church while 
unconverted. One of the uses of the tent is to pro- 
vide a threshold on which they can stand for a 
time, until they get in the right way of thinking in 
regard to the Church; then they can be passed on 
into the Church. 

Another point is: We can reach Catholics in a 
tent. In New York the priest would tell them they 
must not enter a Protestant church, but never pre- 
vented them from going into the tent. So they 
would stand in the avenue, three or four hundred of 
them, listening to all the services; and then come a 
little nearer and nearer. Twenty or thirty gave 
their hearts to Christ. In Pittsfield six Catholics 
came out clear and strong. 

By these tent services God's people are stimulated 
and helped all through the summer, when, perhaps, 
their piety shows decline. No need of lowering the 
standard. If you keep the standard up, you are 
ready to commence work in the fall. The best time 
for a revival, as touching the interests of a young 
convert, is the summer. If he is converted in the 
winter, the spring soon comes, Christian people leave 
their posts, and their is little likelihood of his getting 
the sympathy and care he needs. But if he is con- 
verted in the summer, he is just in time for the be- 
ginning of church work in the fall. 



86 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

Mr. Moody — How much does a tent like yours 
cost ? 

Mr. Pratt — About fourteen hundred dollars. For 
the tent six hundred and twenty-five dollars; for 
the chairs six hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

Mr. Moody — What does it cost to pitch it in a 
town for two or three weeks ? 

Mr. Pratt — Freight, tw^o hundred and fifty miles, 
forty or fifty dollars; two dollars to light it; forty 
dollars a month for a man to take care of it. 

Mr. Moody — I want to say it is a very good invest- 
ment. There are some wealthy men here, and 
wealthy ladies. In the old countries it is customary 
for one man to take hold of one thing like this. In 
this country a good many wait for the Church to 
move. You needn't wait for the Church. Get a 
tent. Hire a man to preach in it all through the 
summer. The blessing of God rests upon such out- 
side efforts. Then in the winter let this man go into 
the weak churches and preach. If he has more than 
he can do, hire a second man; then get a third man. 
I know a man who keeps three evangelists right in 
the field all the time? If he can find a weak church, 
he says to one of his men, "Here, you go to that 
church. I'll pay the bill." I think that is what we 
want in this country. 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 

A number of written questions w r ere then answer- 
ed by Mr. Needham, Dr. Pierson, and Dr. Gordon. 
Mr. Needham thought the Old Testament types 
ought to receive careful study. Dr. Pierson sail i 



PRIVILEGES OP BELIEVERS. 87 

would be a wise rule never to draw a doctrine from 
a type without having first found it elsewhere; but 
having found it elsewhere we can take it from the 
type as confirmation. 

Speaking of Gospel tents, Dr. Pierson said that a 
number of his young men in Philadelphia wanted to 
do some work among the masses in the summer 
time — they wanted to do some hot work in the sum- 
mer to keep cool. They were organized into a band 
of about fifty, called the Evangelist Band. These 
young men consecrated themselves on their knees 
before the Lord, and now see how the Lord used 
them: They took a piece of ground, built around it 
a plain, rough board fence with a gate; then put up 
beams, scantlings and so on; then stretched a tent 
or canopy over the framework, leaving a space 
around where you could walk. This made a capital 
arrangement. These young men just put their own 
work in there, instead of hiring it done. For the 
canopy they got some old sail-cloth, at about one- 
third the cost of new material. After the structure 
was completed they whitewashed the whole interior, 
and made a very neat looking affair. The entire 
cost was only $200. When meetings were com- 
menced the place was full every time. I don't 
believe, said the speaker, there has been a single 
service there without a conversion since it began. 

PEOPLE WITH ITCHING EARS. 

An important question among those answered by 
Dr. Pierson was this: " Should a preacher give any 
heed to the tastes and desires of his hearers?" Said 



- 
88 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

he: No man who is a gentleman, not to say a Chris- 
tian gentleman, will unnecessarily invade the prefer- 
ence of his hearers. There is no necessity for 
making yourself offensive to the tastes of other 
people. But with that single provision, I want to 
say there are two great dangers connected with the 
ministry in these days. One is, that they shall be 
afraid of the condemnation of their hearers; and 
another — quite as great an evil — is, that they shall 
be ambitious of the commendation of their people. 
And I don't know which is the greater. I think 
there is a beautiful thing in Jeremiah that I want 
to call attention to. Two years ago it came like a 
revelation to me. In the forty-second chapter of 
Jeremiah, the captains and leaders of the people 
came to the prophet, saying: "Let, we beseech thee, 
our supplication be accepted before thee, and pray 
for us unto the Lord thy God .... that the 
Lord thy God may show us the way wherein we 
may walk, and the thing that we may do." Jere- 
miah says he will do as they desire, and adds: 
" Whatsoever thing the Lord shall answer you, I 
will declare it unto you; I will keep nothing back 
from you." Then they reply: " The Lord be a true 
and faithful witness between us; if we do not even 
according to all things for the which the Lord thy 
God shall send thee to us. Whether it be good, or 
whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the Lord 
our God." That is a most remarkable thing; and 
yet notice another thing: When Jeremiah got his 
message from God, and delivered it to them, they 
would not obey it, as you will see in the next chap- 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 89 

ter. They persecuted him just the moment he 
delivered the Lord's message to them. That is 
the spirit in which people are likely to look 
at the Cross of Jesus Christ. If a man gets his 
message from the study of Scripture and in prayer, 
he has nothing to do with what the people think 
or say about him. The less he knows the better, 
and the less he cares the better for him. In II Tim. 
iv, 2-4, Paul says : " Preach the Word; be instant 
in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, 
with all long suffering and doctrine." How much, 
does he say, is the preacher to think of the prefer- 
ences of his hearers? "For the time will come 
when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after 
their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, 
having itching ears." The figure here is almost too 
gross to be expounded. It isn't the teachers who 
are spoken of as having itching ears, but the hearers, 
and it should be so translated. They having itching 
ears, shall heap to themselves teachers, and turn 
away from the truth. Diseased animals, that have 
been living in the mud, find their ears itching, and 
they want to get a big stone or heap up something 
to rub their ears against. That is just what the 
Apostle is referring to. He says that when people 
get into uncleanness, and get di seased in the spiritual 
life, then they don't want to hear the truth, but 
they want to get something to relieve the itching of 
their ears. And so all sorts of sensationalism are 
resorted to, and they go where they can hear about 
philanthrophy, statesmanship — anything to relieve 
their itching ears. Now, just notice the figure still 



90 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

further. "They heap to themselves teachers." If 
a man is on the wrong track, rely upon it he will 
get somebody who is going to endorse his errors. 
Perhaps he can only find a single man in a commu- 
nity — for the great majority of ministers are preach- 
ing the truth; but he will go to church after church 
till he finds somebody to Agree with him. If a man 
doesn't like the doctrine of future punishment, he 
finds some one who p)eaches universal salvation. 
He heaps up something to rub his ears against. 
That is why there is such a great number of false 
teachers; so many people having itching ears. 

But a word, friends, about the danger of commen- 
dation. I hold to-day that there is nothing that is 
a greater snare to ministers of the Gospel than the 
compliments of the people to whom they preach. I 
venture to say that if Mr. Moody should tell you 
what had been to him the sorest temptation of the 
flesh, he would say it was the compliments that peo- 
ple have showered on him. I don't know how it is 
with other men, but the flesh is sufficiently strong in 
me. When a man is speaking the message of God, 
it conies very close to blasphemy to compliment the 
sermon. If you compliment the power of the ser- 
mon, you are complimenting the power of the Holy 
Ghost. If a minister does you good, tell him; he 
needs encouragement. But if there is anything that 
ought to humble a man, and cast him down in the 
dust, it is to hear some one say: "That was a 
splendid sermon. " He has no business to preach a 
splendid sermon. There are occasions when a man 
has a right to be eloquent with secular elements; 



PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 91 

but when he preaches the Gospel he should preach 
it in the power of the Holy Ghost. If he doesn't 
preach it in the power of the Holy Ghost it is a fail- 
ure, no matter how brilliant it may be rhetorically. 
If he has the power of the Holy Ghost and succeeds, 
the best thing you can do is to say nothing, but get 
on your knees and ask God to bless the message. 
When your pastor has been the means of good to 
your soul, bless God. 

HOW TO KNOW WE ARE SAVED. 

Dr. Gordon answered the following question, 
among others: "I meet a good many persons who 
hope they are saved. Can a person know he is 
saved, and how ?" Said he: The Apostle John an- 
swers that question when he says: " These things 
are written that ye might know." I was once ob- 
liged to meet the difficulties of a lady who was in a 
state of uncertainty about her salvation. She was 
a lady of great wealth. I said, "Do you own the 
house where you live?" "Yes." "Well, how do 
you know you own it ? Is it because you feel very 
happy every time you walk through it?" No; that 
wasn't the reason. "Well; is it because the neigh- 
bors tell you you own it, and that causes you to 
say, with joyful feeling, 'This is really my posses- 
sion?' " No; it wasn't that. "Well, then; how do 
you know you own the house?" "Why," said she, 
"if you w^ant to know, I have the title deed to it. 
My husband, before he died, gave it to me; and if 
anybody wants to know if I own the house, I can 
just show that." Then I opened this passage, I 



92 PRIVILEGES OF BELIEVERS. 

John v, 11: " This is the record, that God hath given 
to us eternal life; and this life is in His Son." You 
can't go behind the record. Do you believe? Do 
you accept Jesus Christ? Then how can there be 
any doubt about your salvation? 

Mr. Moody read a letter from the London Evan- 
gelistic Committee, assuring the Convention of the 
sympathy and prayers of Christian friends in Eng- 
land. 



FIRST FRUITS. 93 



FIRST FRUITS. 



There were four sermons on Sunday — two at the 
forenoon and two at the afternoon service. In addi- 
tion to other meetings, Dr. Gordon and Dr. Pierson 
preached in the forenoon; Mr. Needham and Mr. 
Moody in the afternoon. 

DR. GORDON ON FIRST FRUITS. 

Dr. Gordon took for his subject the First Fruits. 
He referred to seven texts, and divided his discourse 
under three general heads: 1. The first fruits are a 
specimen of the harvest. When you see them you 
know what the harvest will be. 2. They are an 
assurance of the harvest. When you see them you 
know the harvest is coming. 3. They are a hand- 
ful of the harvest — only a diminutive part of it. 
(1) I Corinthians xv, 20: "Now is Christ risen from 
the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that 
slept." Christ's resurrection has shown us what 
our glorified body is to be. It is to be a spiritual 
body; but not a phantom, for the body of Christ 
had flesh and bones. He entered a room though 
the door was shut, and finally ascended into Heaven, 
defying the laws of gravitation, hence our glorified 
body will be free from the trammels of our present 
state. That passage: "Who shall change our vile 
bodies," is much better rendered in the Ee vised 



94 FIRST FRUITS. 

Version. When Archbishop Whately lay dying, a 
brother minister read to him those words. Whately 
said: "No, no. The human body is a temple of the 
Holy Ghost. It isn't vile. Get the Greek Testa- 
ment." So his friend read the verse in the Greek, 
and it was this: "Who shall change the body cf 
our humiliation, and shall fashion it like the body 
of His glory." This body is not to be cast out be- 
cause vile, but is to be changed and made glo- 
rious. Some object: "The laws of chemistry 
say this is impossible." I say, the laws of Scrip- 
ture say it is possible. Chemical law^s illustrate 
it. Take a bit of charcoal and a diamond. In sub- 
stance they are precisely the same. But here is the 
difference: Charcoal is carbon in its humiliation; the 
diamond is carbon in its glory. (2) Romans viii, 21, 
shows that we ourselves are the first fruits of the 
Spirit. The harvest is coming. As yet we have 
only seen the first fruits. Pentecost itself was only 
a few drops of the coming shower. The prophecy 
remains to be fulfilled: "I will pour out My spirit 
upon all flesh," etc. When twenty thousand Telugus 
are converted in one of our mission fields, it is only 
like a man going round with a watering cart trying 
to make a shower. A watering cart only goes 
through the main streets; it doesn't go into the back 
alleys. But when God sends His great showier, it 
goes not only through the streets and avenues, but 
into all the back alleys. Do you hear of a great 
revival in Boston, New York, Philadelphia ? That 
is only our little watering cart. When God's shower 
comes it will extend to all the islands of the earth. 



FIRST FRUITS. 95 

(3) James i, 18: " Begat He us . . . . that we 
should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures. " In 
the last part of the Scriptures we get a glimpse of 
the wonderful harvest to come. There will be chorus 
singing then — no small quartette singing either, but 
a chorus of ten thousand times ten thousand. 
"Hallelujah" is the only Hebrew word in the Apo- 
calypse. This suggests that in that great chorus of 
the redeemed the Jews are included; they have been 
gathered in, and while the vast hosts are singing, 
they, now and then, in a deep bass voice, break in 
with the shout, "Hallelujah !" Once the Jews cried, 
"Not this man, but Barabbas." They chose a mur- 
derer and robber, and how they have been murdered 
and robbed all down the ages! They chose Caesar 
as king, and how Csesars have oppressed them ever 
since ! But when the times of the Gentiles are ful- 
filled, they are to look on Him whom they have 
pierced, and reverse their cry, saying, ' ' Not Barab- 
bas, but this Man." (4) Eomans xi, 16: "For if the 
first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy." (5) 1 Cor. 
xvi, 15: " The first-fruits of Achaia"— in other words, 
the first-fruits of missions in Asia. In this latter 
half of the nineteenth century we are seeing some- 
thing of the harvest, in Asia especially. (('») Bom. 
xvi, 5: Another reference to the first-fruits in 
Achaia. (7) " These are they which follow the Lamb 
whithersoever He goeth. These were redeemed 
from among men, being the first-fruits unto Gocl and 
the Lamb." May the Lord prepare us! May we 
have a solemn sense of personal responsibility as 
Christians, so to live as to be ready for His coming ! 



96 FIRST FRUITS. 

DR. PIERSON ON CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Dr. Pierson read Luke xxiv, 27 : " Beginning at 
Moses, and all the prophets, He expounded unto 
them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
Himself." Again, verse 44: ".He said unto them, 
These are the words which I spake unto you, while 
I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, 
which were written in the law of % Moses, and in the 
prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me." The 
Jews divided their Scriptures into three portions: 
the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. These words 
of Christ, therefore, were equivalent to saying that 
the entire Old Testament was full of references to 
Him. There is but one book, the Bible. There is 
but one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Richard 
Porson, the Shakesperian scholar, was so familiar 
with the words of his master that it is said he could 
hold a conversation for three days, and express all his 
ideas in the dialect of Shakespeare. Is it not a 
greater wonder that 1,800 years after our Master has 
ascended into glory, we can hold a convention for 
ten days, and speak only the dialect of our Lord 
Jesus Christ ? It is true that all throughout the Old 
Testament Scriptures, everywhere you can find 
Christ. In the first place, in the prophetic Scriptures 
there are distinct and definite prophecies concerning 
His coming, humiliation, death and resurrection. In 
the second place, we find Jesus Christ in the types. 
He is revealed in the sacrificial ceremonies. In the 
third place, we find Him revealed in the allegorical 
portions of Scripture; for we are told that the his- 



FIRST FRUITS. 97 

torical portions have an allegorical meaning. Paul 
says regarding Hagar and Ishmael, " which things 
are an allegory." In the fourth place, we find Christ 
in the enigmas of Scripture. Apparent contradic- 
tions are only reconciled by the blood of Jesus Christ. 
I shall only have time to speak of the prophetic and 
the typical Scriptures. Why was there an interval 
of 400 years between the close of the Old Testament 
and the coming of Christ ? It was in order to show 
that there could have been no contact or collusion 
between the prophets of the Old Testament and the 
Evangelists of the New. Suppose you are traveling 
in a foreign country, and are called upon to unlock 
the door of a certain closet in some mysterious castle. 
You try and fail. You send for the best locksmiths, 
and they fail. But, while you continue your travels, 
you find in another castle 500 or 1,000 miles away, 
a key which you think, from the character of its 
wards, is just what you wanted. You hasten back, 
and put it in the lock; instantly the bolts are flung 
back, and you open the door. At once you conclude 
that the same man must have made both the lock 
and the key. Precisely so is it when wo find that, 
notwithstanding a separation of 400 years, Jesus 
Christ is the fulfillment of prophecy. How many of 
us have ever looked into the argument from simple 
and compound probability? If I utter a prophecy 
that contains a certain particular, there will be a 
chance of a fulfillment and a chance of its non-ful- 
fillment. It will be a wonder if it is fulfilled, yet 
there is half a chance that it will be. Suppose I 
utter a prediction containing two particulars : I add 



98 FIRST FRUITS. 

another element; the half -chance must be divided, 
and there is only left a quarter of a chance. If you 
get twenty-five particulars in a prophecy, all of 
which must unite in the fulfillment, you have got 
to raise one-half to its twenty-fifth power in order 
to estimate the probability of such a thing occurring. 
And wiien you bring one-half to its twenty-fifth 
power, you get into millions and billions. You must 
have one chance against millions and billions of 
chances in order that the thing shall occur. This 
shows the magnificent power of the argument from 
prophecy. It never has been met — never will be met. 
Not only do the prophetic Scriptures contain direct 
predictions concerning Christ, but the whole Bible 
is full of indirect allusions to Him, and the salvation 
He came to achieve. Something about this great 
salvation is literally contained in every book of the 
Bible from Genesis to Malachi. Dr. Pierson then 
reviewed every book of the Old Testament to prove 
this statement and to exhibit the wonderful wealth 
of the Hebrew Scriptures in types prefiguring Christ. 
He closed with an impressive application, warning 
hearers that should any still be rejecting the Sa- 
viour, all those voices would be raised against them, 
and leave them without excuse before the bar of 
God. 

MR. NEEDHAM ON THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST. 

Mr. George C. Needham spoke in the afternoon 
on "The Priesthood of Christ," taking as his text 
Hebrews iv, 14: "Seeing then that we have a 
great high priest, that is passed into the heavens 3 



FIRST FRUITS. 99 

Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profes- 
sion.'' He likened the present ministry of Christ 
to the rainbow, that glorious arch which leaves the 
earth at one point to return to it at another. Christ's 
ministry runs parallel with the ministry of the 
Spirit; His intercession is for us; the intercession 
of the Spirit is in us. 1. The certainty of His 
priestly ministry for us. The statements of Chris 
tianity are absolute. ' ' We have a great high priest. " 
It is our privilege to know the fact. There may be 
agnostics outside of Christianity, but a Christian 
agnostic is inconceivable. The basis of our knowl- 
edge is the Word of God, and we have only to adapt 
our conduct to the truth it reveals, Heb. hi, 1: 
" Consider the apostles and High Priest of our pro- 
fession, Christ Jesus." 2. The necessity of Christ's 
priesthood. In some form priesthood is recognized 
in nearly all religions. Man's cry is (Job ix, 33): 
"Neither is there any daysmen betwixt us, that 
might lay his hand upon us both!" God's answer 
is (1 Tim. ii, 5): " This is good and acceptable in the 
sight of God our Saviour, who will have all men to 
be saved . . . For there is one God, and one 
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
Jesus." He is the " God-man" — from man to God. 
The title " priest" signifies asacrificer. It implies 
the offering of a victim to God and certain results 
flowing therefrom. Priesthood is a necessity (Heb. 
vii, 3). 3. Qualifications. Under the Jewish law 
certain requirements were demanded. The priest 
must be without blemish (Lev. 17, 18, 21.) Christ 
was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin- 



100 FIRST FRUITS. 

ners (Heb. vii, 26). He must be human, in order 
that he may be humane— compassionate (Heb. v, 1, 
2). He must be of Divine appointment (Heb. v, 4). 
The right of Christ to the priesthood stands unchal- 
lenged. His priesthood began in His resurrection. 
" Touch Me not/' He said; "I ascend." He must 
be in the married state, with a spotless wife (Lev. 
xxi, 13, 14.) The bride of Christ is the Church 
(2 Cor. xi, 2; Eev. xix, 7, 8). 4. The place of priestly 
ministry. The priests of old officiated in the taber- 
nacle and the Temple. The holy and most holy 
places were shadows of realities to come. Christ 
hath ascended into Heaven, where His priest- 
hood is exercised (Heb. iv, 14; viii, 1, 2; x, 11, 12.) 
We see Him standing to receive Stephen. 5. The 
design of the priesthood, This is, first, to present 
atonement for sin (Lev. xvi, 15, 21, 22; Heb. ix,14- 
26), and to affect reconciliation. Secondly, to present 
worship and the worshipper acceptably to God (John 
xiv, 23; Eph. v, 2; Eev. viii, 3, 4; Col. i, 21, 22; 
Jude 24). The priesthood, further, is the medium of 
blessing (Num. vi, 22-27; Luke xxiv, 50, 51). 6. 
Three parts of the priestly ministry. Christ is our 
Advocate (1 John ii, 1); our Intercessor (Heb. vii, 
24, 25); our Keeper (John xvii); and our Mediator — 
the Bridge, the Way. 

SERMON BY MR. MOODY. 

Mr. Moody then preached a sermon, which was 
listened to eagerly throughout by the one thousand 
five hundred persons present. It was addressed 
chiefly to the unconverted. For want of space here, 



FIRST FRUITS. 101 

it will be published in full in an early number of 
Sabbath Reading, in which form it will be specially 
well adapted for distribution. The following will 
serve as a synopsis: Mr. Moody took as his subject 
the grace of God, and as his text, Titus ii, 11-15 : 
"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath 
appeared to all men/' etc. Said he: "I like to preach 
the Gospel — it's so free. A great many people lose 
salvation because they think they can attain it by 
good works. To secure salvation, all that we have 
to do is to believe in Christ. Good works come after 
salvation, not before it. When Christ has offered 
His own body as an atonement for sin, let us not 
insult Him by offering anything in ourselves for the 
same purpose. Some men are fond of boasting that 
they are " self-made." There will be none of that 
kind of boasting in Heaven. A Southern spy heaped 
all manner of curses on Lincoln's head, till he was 
pardoned; then, overcome by the president's magna- 
nimity, he became his warmest friend and defender. 
That is a faint picture of God's grace. "Every 
mouth shall be stopped." God will allow no flesh to 
boast in His presence. If we want salvation we 
must take it as a gift. Think what this salvation 
means. It is life— life eternal. If I offered this 
audience a $10,000 bill, all the sheriffs in this county 
couldn't keep back the crowd that would come tum- 
bling over these seats. And yet you won't take 
eternal life. 

We must have good works, it is true, but they are 
the result of salvation. Man works from the Cross. 
Some people take that verse,.'" Work out your own 



102 FIRST FRUITS. 

salvation with fear and trembling ;" and think that 
means they are to get salvation by working it out. 
But this text is only for those who already have sal- 
vation. How are you going to work out your sal- 
vation until you have it ? God gives us grace enough 
to work out our salvation as we go along. Remem- 
ber, He won't give it to us all at once. If He did we 
wouldn't know w^hat to do with it. A man once 
built a house on the shore of Lake Erie, and laid a 
pipe from the lake to supply the house with water. 
Suppose "some one had given him the whole lake* 
What could he have done with it ? He only wanted 
communication with the lake. God supplies us with 
just as much grace as we need, and no more. Don't 
be afraid you won't get all you require. I was once 
talking with an English woman on this subject. 
She was afraid she couldn't live a Christian life, be- 
cause there would be so many trials and temptations 
in future. I tried in one way and another to con- 
vince her that she need have no misgivings— that 
God would supply daily grace sufficient for every 
emergency. Nothing availed till I used the old story 
of the clock. The pendulum of a clock once became 
discouraged— didn't see how it was ever going to 
tick out all the hours it was expected to measure. 
The clock reasoned with it, saying, " Only one tick 
at a time," and so it went on with its slow and 
steady " tick-tick." The lady caught the idea, and 
talked so much about that clock that people called 
her Lady Pendulum. She sent me a beautiful clock, 
that's now ticking away over at my house. The 
Lord will always give us grace as we ask for it — 



FIRST FRUITS. 103 

enough for the time. There ought to be no room, 
then, for the devil, if our hearts are full of this grace. 
For the Christian there is peace in the past, hope 
in the present, and glory in the future. Child of 
God, lift up your head. Soon will come that glory. 
When a Christian dies, it is like the sowing of corn 
— only sown for a life. It is a mistake to talk about 
the " dark valley of the shadow of death." It isn't 
dark. If it was there couldn't be any shadow, Did 
you ever see a shadow in a dark cellar? There must 
be light to make a shadow, and there is light even 
in the valley of death. God's grace is for all. We 
shall have all we need if we only keep near the base 
of supply. We will have trials and temptations; 
but thorns in the flesh are a good thing for us. 
Paul's prison showed how we ought to sing in 
tribulation. The devil thought he had put an end 
to John Bunyan when he got him into Bedford jail, 
but it was there he wrote the " Pilgrim's Progress." 
A good many people want grace to die by. What 
we need is grace to live by. If we have that, God 
will give us dying grace. 

We must use grace to work out our salvation. 
The grace of God will make us kind, true, honest, 
upright. If it doesn't do that for me I don't want 
it. The Church of God should seek to live on a 
higher plane. If Christians would exhibit more of 
God's grace in their daily lives they could meet the 
world better. We want more " peculiar" people. 
No doubt Enoch was considered peculiar by the 
public of his day. He wouldn't have gone to 
a horserace. He was peculiar, but he walked 



104 FIRST FRUITS. 

with God, and one day he was taken up to Heaven 
without dying. Gone for a long walk, isn't he ? 
Elijah was considered peculiar — people thought him 
very conceited and bigoted. But he was right and 
the world was wrong; and God honored him by 
taking him up in a chariot of fire. Paul, at Eome, 
seemed a fanatic, a madman; but what Eoman ora- 
tor, general, or emperor has his fame? "Be zealous 
of good works." This morning I found on my 
breakfast plate this text: " Zealous of Good Works," 
from Lady Pemberton, of London — done in dried 
flowers from her own garden. She is confined to 
her room, a cripple, but she has made two hundred 
and fifty of these with her own hands and sent 
them to the London hospitals. People talk about 
having zeal without knowledge. I'd rather have 
zeal without knowledge than knowledge without 
zeaL Go to work. Let God use you. If he could 
use an old dried-up rod in the hands of Moses, can't 
He use you? If He could use those old ram's horns 
before Jericho, or the jawbone of an ass in the hand 
of Samson, or the little stone in the sling of David, 
can't He use you? Be zealous of good works. Be 
used of God. Whatever is done for God cannot be 
small. When the widow put her mite in the box 
at the Temple, if there were any Jerusalem reporters 
picking up items, they wouldn't have thought that 
worthy of a paragraph; but they would have been 
sure to tell about the rich Mrs. Levi and her gift of 
$1,000, to the extent of half -a-column with big head- 
lines. Yet the smaller gift was the larger. Every- 
one has heard about the widow's mite; and mite 



FIRST FRUITS. 105 

societies must have brought in millions of dollars to 
the Church. The trouble is, too many men sneak 
behind the widow's mite. A rich man to whom I 
once applied for a contribution, said, while handing 
me a dollar, "Well, I will give the widow's mite." 
"Will you," said I, "then I'll take all you've got. 
That's what she gave." Despise not the day of 
small things. Mary's memorial is known around 
the earth to-day. " She hath done what she could." 

DR. PIERSON ON MISSIONS. 

In the afternoon a stirring address was made by 
Dr. Pierson on the subject of missions. Said he : 
Evangelization is universal. It consists in preaching, 
teaching, and testifying. It relies on three promises 
of Christ : to be always with us, to send the Holy 
Spirit, and to give supernatural signs. It is obliga- 
tory, and not only upon ministers or missionaries, 
but upon all. Christlieb says : "The modern era of 
foreign missions is the closest parallel of the super- 
natural signs of old that we have in the recurrence 
of events in present time." The miracle of regenera- 
tion among abandoned men is God's pillar of fire 
to-day. See how obstacles have been removed. 
These obstacles fell into four groups : of approach, of 
intercourse, of impression, and of action. Glance at 
the way these were combined and the wonderful 
manner in which they have melted away. When 
the work began, the penetration of the continents 
w4th the Gospel was a physical impossibility. Many 
nations of the earth were shut even to commerce. 
China was enclosed by the sea and the great wall. 



106 FIRST FRUITS. 

Africa was a vast stretch of unexplored country — 
only the mere thread of coast-line being known geo- 
graphically. The deeds of the Fiji Islanders to mis- 
sionaries had been fiendish, horrible beyond expres- 
sion, written in blood and registered in hell. 
Languages in scores were unknown, without 
grammar or dictionary. Women in thousands^ 
cooped up in zenana, harem, and seraglio, were 
absolutely inaccessible. Now every country has been 
opened up. Even Corea, the hermit nation, has been 
opened up. Over twenty thousand women in foreign 
lands can be reached by the Gospel. Sixty languages 
have been reduced to writing and a grammatical 
form. Not one obstacle out of fifty that confronted 
us at the beginning impedes us now. 

All this has been accomplished by devoted labor. 
William Johnson, who died in Sierra Leone, after 
seven years* work, left every trade, industry, and 
profession interested, with a church of a capacity of 
one thousand six hundred, whereas, at his coming, 
more than twenty kinds cf people were living with a 
miserable little sign language. In India, in 1868, 
there was wrought the most magnificent work since 
the day of Pentecost. I tell you the Gospel is done 
with traveling by stage coach. It goes by lightning. 
History gives glorious testimony to the spreading of 
the Word among men. At the opening of the eigh- 
teenth century the air was full of deism, atheism, 
and lasciviousness. Louis -XVI and Mme. cIq Pom- 
padour were at the head of France; with Frederick 
the Great under the influence of Voltaire, Germany 
was tumbling under an influx cf rationalism and 



FIRST FRUITS. 107 

skepticism. Then God sent out the twelve modern 
apostles, with Whitefield and Wesley at their head. 
With the year 1747 opens the era of modern missions, 
when Jonathan Edwards sent out from Northamp- 
ton a tract asking for the effusion of the Spirit upon 
the habitable globe — a trumpet peal to the whole 
w x orld. In 1757 occurred the battle of Plassy, when 
Lord Clive, sword in hand, gave England the entering 
wedge to India. In 1792 the first missionary society 
was organized. William Carey, the " consecrated cob- 
bler," was sent out to India from England, In the 
fourteen years succeeding to the first, seven foreign 
missions were founded. Commodore Perry en- 
tered Japan in 1853; in 1857 occurred the Sepoy 
mutiny, which gave new impulse to the Indian work, 
showing the natives what friends they had in the 
English. In 1858, England, France and America 
concluded the treaty with China, which added thirty- 
five million more to the missionary effort. The year 
1868 was the annus mirdbilus in evangelical work, 
no fewer than ten thousand people being baptized in 
one week and sixty thousand during the "winter, 
while twenty individuals alone gave $4,000,000 for 
mission work. In 1873 Turkey joined the lands 
open to work. In 1873 Stanley, as a reporter of the 
New York Herald, went after Livingston, finding 
him in 1877, fulfilling the prophecy in regard to 
Ethiopia. In one thousand days after his return the 
Congo chain of lakes was compassed; in one thou- 
sand more there was a chain of stations along them. 
In 1884, as a result of the Berlin conference, the 



108 FIRST FRUITS. 

Congo state was established, civil and reilgious 
liberty being assured, not only Protestant nations 
such as England, and Catholic such as Italy, but 
the Greek Church of Russia, and the Moslem, agree- 
ing to the compact. 

Now, said the speaker, what shall be the practical 
outcome of this Convention? What is wanted is a 
World's Conference. Let witnesses come from all 
parts of the world to tell what the Lord is doing, so 
that we may light upon the altars of our hearts new 
consecrated fires. Let the missionary societies of all 
the denominations take part, and let them agree to 
follow principles of courtesy and comity, so that 
wherever one denomination has a successful work, 
other denominations will not interfere, but look 
farther, and go into the destitute places. At this 
great council let it be resolved that there shall not be 
one portion of the earth without some responsible 
Christian denomination to take charge of its evan- 
gelists. Let the missionaries multiply. Let them 
be not only educated clergymen, accustomed to 
intellectual employment — contact with books; but 
let them be taken from every walk of lif e, and thrust 
into contact with men. Let these young men and 
young women go through short courses of training 
in the history of missions, and in the knowledge of 
the Word of God and Christian doctrine. Then let 
them go into those great fields, and continue their 
studies, not in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, but in the 
language of the very heathen among whom they 
labor. While they are getting acquainted with the 



FIRST FRUITS. 109 

people and the language, let them do such work as 
they can in connection with the mission — setting 
t3 r pe ? etc. , or even menial labor. Such young men 
and women will do splendid work for the Master. 



110 POWER. 



POWER— PENTECOST POSSIBLE IN THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



SECRET OF SUCCESS. 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT FOR SERVICE — ADDRESSES 

BY MR. MOODY AND OTHERS — VARIOUS 

PRACTICAL HINTS. 



Bev. Dr. Gordon spoke on the Holy Spirit, taking 
as his text John xiv, 16, 17. He called special at- 
tention to the change in the tense : " Ye know Him; 
for He dwelleth (present tense) with you, and shall 
be (future tense) in you." Before the day of Pente- 
cost God dwelt with His people; after it He dwelt 
in His people. In Old Testament times a cloud of 
glory hung over the Mercy-Seat. The Jews have a 
curious tradition. They say that when God finally 
became weary of the apostacy of Israel, this cloud 
lifted from the Mercy-Seat and remained for three- 
and-a-half years on the top of Mount Olivet, during 
which time a voice could be heard saying, " Seek ye 
the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him 
while He is near." At last the cloud lifted from the 
brow of Olivet, went away to Heaven, and was seen 
no more. This cloud came back in the person of 



POWER. Ill 

Jesus Christ. He was the temple of flesh, dedicated 
on the banks of the Jordan; and in Him God dwelt. 
Again for three-and-a-half years God pleaded with 
Israel; and when Christ ascended the cloud rose and 
departed the second time. The third temple consists 
of the hearts of believers. See how it was dedicat- 
ed. The disciples were gatherd with one accord in 
one place. Suddenly the Holy Ghost descended upon 
them with tongues of fire, and sat upon each of 
them. Notice that word "sat"— it is significant. 
Just as the cloud sat upon the Mercy-Seat, the Holy 
Ghost descended in visible form and " sat upon each 
of them." Immediately the Holy Ghost was spoken 
of as the present authority. Ananias and Sapphira 
were punished because they had "lied unto the Holy 
Ghost." The Apostle said, " It seeemed good to the 
Holy Ghost and to us." 

This wonderful truth— of the indwelling of the 
Spirit— is the characteristic trait of the dispensation 
in which we live. If whatever is true of Christ is 
true of us, it will repay us to examine the account 
of His baptism. (Luke iv. ) In it we fin d four things : 
He was filled with the Spirit; was led by the Spirit; 
had the power of the Spirit; and was anointed by the 
Spirit, 

f£ FILLED." 

1. The first thing said of the disciples after Pente- 
cost was that they were " filled with the Holy 
Ghost. " Whenever there was anything important to 
be done, it says, for example: "Paul, being filled 
with the Spirit," spake thus: "Peter, being filled 
with the Spirit," did this.. It was characteristic of 



112 POWER. 

the Apostolic Church that they were men full of the 
Holy Ghost. Is that our privilege? It is not only 
our privilege; it is our duty. "Be filled with the 
Spirit/' is a command. "Be not drunken with 
wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit, 
speaking unto one another in psalms and hymns, 
and spiritual songs." If a man is drunk with wine 
he will speak out. He won't have to be educated 
before he will let loose his tongue. If a man is 
filled with the Holy Spirit he won't have to learn 
much before he can deliver his message— it will 
come spontaneously. In Germany, a man was 
once so holy that the neighbors called him the 
"God-intoxicated man." We want a " God-intoxi- 
cated Church." Some one says: "That is a great 
mystery. How can we be filled with the Spirit?" 
Well, we can't fill ourselves. But there is one 
thing we can do; we can empty ourselves. In 
speaking of the Spirit, Christ uses the simile of 
the wind. You know the wind always blows to- 
wards a vacuum. If we can make a vacuum in our 
hearts, the Holy Ghost will fill them. During that 
ten days before Pentecost, do you suppose the disci- 
ples were just praying over and over again? I think 
they did a good deal more than pray. I im- 
agine they were just emptying their hearts. Peter 
says: "I am headstrong and rash. I wanted to 
call down fire from heaven. I denied my Master." 
They were confessing their faults whi]e waiting for 
power. In ten days they had got their hearts really 
empty, when the Spirit came like a rushing, mighty 
wind, to fill the vacuum, I wonder how many of 



POWER. 113 

you have read the life of James Brainerd Taylor, 
lie was a graduate of Princeton, and only twenty- 
eight when he died; yet he did a work that any 
man might envy. He got hold of the idea that there 
was something in this doctrine of the enduement of 
the Spirit. Studying the sub ject, he became perfectly 
sure that the Holy Ghost might come upon him as 
upon the original disciples. So he prayed, and his 
prayers were answered. Whenever he went out he 
stirred all with whom he came in contact. Sinners 
used to fall before his preaching as grass before the 
scythe. It was spontaneous. He couldn't help 
speaking to men; and his words were mighty. There 
is one very beautiful incident in his life. One day 
he was out driving, and he drew his horse up to a 
watering-trough. It so happened that another 
young man was doing the same thing. While the 
two horses' heads met in the trough, he turned to 
the young man and said: "I hope you love the 
Lord. If you don't, I want to commend him to you 
as your best friend. Seek Him with all your heart." 
That was all; they turned and went their ways. 
But what was the result? The young man thus 
spoken to was converted, was educated for the min- 
istry, and went as a missionary to Africa. Said this 
missionary afterwards: " Over and over again I 
wished I knew who that man was who spoke to 
me at the watering-trough. But I never knew, till 
some one sent to me in Africa a box of books. I 
opened them; saw a little black-covered book; 
opened it; turned to the title page, and there I saw a 
portrait— a beautiful face. ' Ah,' said I, 'that is the 



114 POWER. 

man. That's the man who preached the Gospel to 
me at the watering-trough. To him I owe my sal- 
vation. 5 " And that of how many more on the Dark 
Continent? What we want to-day is to be filled 
with the Spirit. We are filled with so many other 
things — pride, selfishness, ambition, and vain-glory. 
May the I ord enable us to empty our hearts, and 
have them filled as with a mighty, rushing wind! 

< C LED." 

2. Christ was led by the Spirit. Believers are 
thus led. Leading implies going before. One hymn 
I criticise : " Holy Spirit, faithful Guide, ever near 
the Christian's side." The Spirit is not beside us; 
He goes before to lead. Some people ask whether 
it is possible to be led by the Spirit as in the days of 
old. I believe it is. When the Spirit told Philip to 
join himself to the eunuch, He touched both Philip 
and the eunuch at the same time — struck two notes, 
producing perfect harmony. Does not the same 
thing occur in our own experience ? One morning 
my wife said to me, "I must go and talk with so- 
and-so, mentioning a young man's name. This 
young man was the son of a wealthy father, and 
had been reared in most aristocratic circumstances, 
but had proven a profligate, and had been turned 
out of the house. We did not know him especially, 
but my wife had an overwhelming impression that 
she must go and speak to him. As soon as she got 
her breakfast, we prayed together that the Lord 
would use the word, and she started off. She got to 
the house, rang the bell, was admitted, and the 
young man was called. When he came into the 



POWER. 115 

room he said, "I am glad you have come to see me," 
and it wasn't half an hour till he was on his knees. 
The Spirit had prepared his heart, and then caused 
my wife to go and see him. He is now a sober, 
steadfast Christian young man. Thomas Guthrie 
says that one day when he was out walking there 
came to him a most curious, irresistible impulse to 
go and see a widow who lived in a cottage in that 
vicinity. Says he : "I had been to see her recently, 
and didn't think it was necessary to go again so soon. 
But the impression came with such tremendous force 
that I started on a run. On the way I met one of 
my most intimate friends, who wanted to talk with 
me. ' I can't stop,' I said; 'I am in a great hurry.' 
On I ran with all my might, till I got to this widow's 
cottage. She was a helpless cripple— had been left 
alone — the servant had gone out and the house was 
on fire ! When I got there the flames were on either 
side of her, sweeping nearer and nearer. Had I been 
five minutes too late she must have perished. I Kf ted 
her in my arms, and took her out of the house." 
Now, don't you believe the Spirit of God told Thomas 
Guthrie to go to that cottage just as truly as He told 
Philip to go to the chariot of the eunuch ? I think 
if we were led by the Spirit we would have a great 
deal more freedom about everything. " Where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Some people 
think that it means liberty for them to do just about 
as they please. The real meaning is very different. 
The Spirit is to do just as He pleases. I never shall 
forget how I was startled when a young man — a 



116 POWER, 

stranger, but a very good Christian man — asked this 
question : " Do you always have a programme made 
out for the Holy Ghost in your church 2" That was 
all he asked; but it stuck to me. Everything was 
fixed very exactly — a voluntary here, a response 
here, a sermon here, a?nd so on — all fixed from begin- 
ning to end. I don't think the Spirit of God has 
anything to do with that. Let us have more liberty. 
It is the lack of this liberty that causes so much dead- 
ness in the pulpit, and deadnessin the pew. Oh, for 
the liberty of the Spirit ! 

IN THE SPIRIT'S POWER. 

3. The Lord went in the power of the Spirit. His 
final words to His disciples were: " Ye shall receive 
power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." 
It is a remarkable fact that in Scripture there are 
fifty-two passages in which " power" and "Holy 
Ghost " are linked together. Water assumes three 
different shapes : ice, liquid, and vapor. It is the 
vapor, though invisible, which moves the machinery 
of this nineteenth century. Of the three persons in 
the God-head, perhaps the Holy Spirit receives least 
attention from us. Yet it is the power of the Spirit 
that propels the machinery of all our missionary 
efforts. Oh, for this power ! David Brainerd went 
often into the woods to wrestle with God in prayer, 
and, sometimes, though the weather was cold, he 
would remain till every thread of his clothing was 
wet with the sweat of his intercession. Every such 
period of prayer was immediately followed by a great 
outpouring of the Spirit. 



POWER. 117 



" ANOINTED." 



4. Christ was anointed. There were two parts of 
the anointing ceremony — the sprinkling of blood, and 
anointing with oil. One was the symbol of cleans- 
ing, the other of sanctifying. After we are regen- 
erated something remains to be done. We must be 
sanctified. When a leper was cleansed, the priest 
anointed with oil the tip of his right ear, the thumb 
of his right hand, and the great toe of his right foot. 
This signifies that we are to be thoroughly sanctified 
in every part of our being. Every part of our body 
is to be used for God. Do you say, "I am not 
ordained to be a preacher." Well, perhaps yoit' are 
a good singer. God holds you to do something. 
When the people of a church become thoroughly 
consecrated, a revival is sure to follow. Once the 
great Athenian general, Themistocles, Avas about to 
fight a naval battle. All were ready when the sun 
rose, but the order to advance did not come. Hour 
after hour passed — no command to advance. Some 
of the officers murmured, saying: "Is Themistocles 
afraid ? Is he a traitor ? or is he going to fight that 
battle ?" But Themistocles knew what he was about. 
According to the geography of that country, at nine 
o'clock a land breeze sweeps down from the moun- 
tain. He thought: "Now, if I wait till nine o'clock, 
instead of having half of my men at the oars and 
the other half at the spears, I can let the wind do the 
business." So he waited; the wind filled the sails; 
and he won the battle, because every man was a 
warrior. That is what we want — every man a war- 
rior. In our churches there are too many men at 



118 POWER. 

the oars. There is a committee on music — three or 
four men to attend to the music, and that is all they 
have to do year in and year out. Then we have a 
committee on credentials, and a committee on 
finances, and a committee to attend to the social 
interests of the young people. And thus our churches 
are all divided up into committees, so that when we 
come to the great work to be done — the conversion 
of souls — our men are all engaged at the oars. Oh, 
that we might understand that it is possible to have 
this heavenly breeze, to fill our sails, and release us 
from the oars. Let our motto be, " Every man a 
warrior !" 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 119 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 



ADDRESS BY MR. MOODY. 

By special request, Mr. Moody spoke on "The 
Gift of the Holy Spirit for Service." Said he: I 
want to call attention to the work of the Spirit. 
Now, the first thing the Holy Ghost does with a 
man — an unconverted man — is to convince him 
of sin. No other power can convince a man of 
sin but the power of the Holy Ghost. I believe 
you might fill this building with unconverted 
people, and then, if you could, you might even 
get the angel Gabriel to come down here and 
preach to them, and if he were to preach without the 
Holy Ghost there wouldn't be one soul converted. 
If an angel from Heaven hasn't got the power of 
the Holy Ghost, he cannot convict of sin. I would 
rather give up the work I am engaged in — I would 
rather go and break stones or saw wood than do the 
work I am engaged in if I had to convince an audi- 
ence of sin. It is a very comforting thought that 
that is not my work. My work is to declare the 
truth; it is the work of the Holy Spirit to convince 
of sin. 

LOVE OF GOD. 

Then, after a man has been convinced of sin, and 
is willing to give up his sins — for unless a man is 



120 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

willing to give up his sins, there is no chance for 
God to save him — when he is willing to give up his 
sins and ask God for mercy, the next act of the 
Holy Ghost is to shed abroad the love of God in that 
man's heart. You might as well tell me that you 
can leap over the Atlantic Ocean or fell an American 
forest with a penknife, as to say you can love God 
with the natural heart. No unregenerate heart can 
love God. When a man is born of God, and has 
become a partaker of the Divine nature, then comes 
this second thing, to love God; and that is the work 
of the Holy Ghost — to impart or shed abroad the 
love of God in our hearts. Love is spontaneous. 
You can't make yourself love. The moment the 
Spirit of God gives you the power, you can't help 
loving Him. In Galatians v, 22, Paul says the fruit 
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, etc. But these are all 
summed up in love. Joy is only love exalted. Faith 
is only love in the battlefield. So you can sum up 
every one of these qualities, and they all come to one 
word at last. And if a man is full of love, the first 
thing you see he is at work for God. He has got 
done talking about duty. He has risen into a higher 
plane. The love of God constrains him, so that he 
can't help but work — it is his delight to work. 

HOPE. 

The next thing the Holy Ghost does is: It imparts 
hope. You never saw a discouraged man in your 
life who was full of the Holy Ghost. You never 
saw a man full of the Holy Spirit going around with 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 121 

his head down. A man full of the Holy Ghost is a 
hopeful man. He knows the time is coming when 
Christ will appear in His kingdom, and his scepter 
will sway the whole earth. We want to be full of 
hope. Let a minister become discouraged, and it 
will be like a contagious disease in his congregation. 
I have known ministers to be discouraged — disheart- 
ened. When they are in that condition, if they will 
take my advice, they will get out of the pulpit. 
They are doing more harm than good. God never 
will use a man when he has lost courage. Look at 
Elijah — cast out of the community. There he was, 
cast down, no better than his fathers. That is just 
the position of a good many of God's children; they 
have lost hope, become discouraged. A physician 
told me that a friend of his came to him greatly cast 
down, greatly depressed. Said he: "I said to this 
man: c Have you any doubt that it is the decree of 
high Heaven that every knee shall bow and every 
tongue confess Christ?' 'Well/ the man said, 
c Christ will come and reign over the whole earth ! 5 
'Do you believe it? Then what are you cast down 
for?' " We needn't be cast down. It is only a ques- 
tion of time before the stone cut out of the mountain 
is going to become like a great mountain and fill 
the whole earth. Christ shall reign. If He is going 
to reign, you and I ought to be full of hope. There 
was a minister in Glasgow who had no hope at all. 
Some one said to him, "You will accept results, 
won't you?" "Oh, yes; I will accept results." 
"Well, here is the Bible; you can see what Christ 
is going to do. If the Bible says it is going to 



122 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

be done, it is just as good as done, isn't it?" A min- 
ister without hope can do his people no good. A 
Sabbath-school teacher, discouraged, disheartened, 
can do the children no good. They know very well 
tha.t their teacher is good for nothing. Therefore it 
is very important we have hope; and if we have the 
Spirit, we have hope. 

LIBERTY. 

The next thing : We have liberty. I believe a 
man who is full of the Holy Ghost will have liberty. 
What we want in our churches more than anything 
else is this liberty. Why, look at the stiffness in 
most of our churches. Put a man in an audience 
where men and women are going to criticise, and 
he won't have much liberty — much freedom. 
In the day of Pentecost, how many do you suppose 
criticised ? I don't believe Peter would have preach- 
ed near as well as he preached if the people had 
been criticising him. Suppose those Jews had been 
full of criticism, I don't believe a soul would have 
been converted. But while Peter was preaching the 
people were listening in a proper frame of mind, 
and they helped him right on. He just had liberty 
that day — great liberty. When you see a minister 
in the pulpit w^ho doesn't have liberty, pray for him. 
You will find he will get on much better than if you 
were to sit there and criticise him. When a man 
has the Spirit in him, he will have liberty. It won't 
be hard for him to speak. It won't be hard for him 
to testify. There's many a man toiling — working 
hard in the pulpit, and no liberty — seeming to be 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 123 

bound hand and foot. Ah, my friends, where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there will be liberty. 

TESTIFYING OF CHRIST. 

The next thing the Spirit does — it testifies of Christ, 
That is His work, to testify of Christ. "He shall 
not speak of Himself." "He shall testify of Me." 
On the day of Pentecost the Spirit did testify of 
Christ. Peter, under the power of the Holy Ghost, 
spoke of Christ all through his sermon, and ended it 
by-saying : ' ' God hath made that same Jesus, whom 
ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." That 
same Jesus they had crucified, God had taken up out 
of Joseph's sepulchre, and seated Him at His own 
right hand. Peter told the Jews this great truth, 
and the Holy Ghost said, "Amen." Now, if the 
Holy Ghost hadn't given Peter freedom, he might 
have preached for ten years and there wouldn't have 
been a soul converted — the people wouldn't have 
believed; but the Holy Ghost bore witness as Jesus 
said He would do. Go into your pulpit, or Sabbath- 
school class, and though you may declare the truth, 
if the Spirit doesn't testify to what you say, it will 
be just beating against the air, and there will be no 
power. 

A TEACHER. 

Another thing He will do: He will teach you all 
things. I like that word — all things. He will teach 
us all things that it is best for us to know. I think 
it is very dishonoring to God to go around trying to 
learn the things He has hidden from us in any other 
way than the way He has provided. We have got 



124 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

the Holy Ghost. He has been sent down from 
Heaven to guide us into all truth. He will teach us 
all things, and show us the things of God. So I 
believe it is very dishonoring for us to be running off 
after departed spirits when we have got the Holy 
Spirit. Honor Him. Let Him be your Guide. "He 
shall guide you into all truth." The Holy Ghost 
never led a man into darkness, or error, or supersti- 
tion. He leads him into the full blaze of Calvary. 
" He will guide you into all truth . . . and He 
will show you things to come. 5 ' A lot of people 
have got an idea now that this old Book is worn out, 
and that when we preach from the Bible we are only 
harping on the same old thing. Why, here is a Book 
that will tell you the future. Where can you get 
anything fresher than you have got here ? If I 
wanted to know the future I wouldn't go to the 
Springfield Republican. The best that newspapers 
can do is to tell you what has happened. This Book 
tells you what is going to happen. Do you want to 
know what is going to happen thousands of years 
hence ? This is the only book in the world that will 
tell you. What it said thousands of years ago would 
happen is coming to pass now, and what it says will 
take place in the future is just as certain. It is 
absurd to talk about this Book having lost its power. 
I'd like to see some of these philosophers building a 
house with no windows in it. Why don't they build 
a house without any windows, and say, " We have 
got the electric light now, we can shut out the sun. 
That's old !" Would that be sensible ? Yet there 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 125 

would be just as much sense in that as there is in 
talking the same way about this old Book. 

A COMFORTER. 

Then, the Holy Spirit is a Comforter. "He will 
comfort you." When Christ was crucified, His dis- 
ciples seemed to have forgotten all He had ever said 
to them. He had told them over and over again that 
He would rise again on the third day. His enemies 
remembered that. They had better memories than 
His disciples, for they set soldiers to watch His grave. 
It has always been a mystery to me why every dis- 
ciple of Christ was not around that sepulchre wait- 
ing. He had told them He would rise; but they 
wouldn't believe it, or they seemed to forget. But 
after the day of Pentecost, then it was that all the 
words of Christ came bubbling up in their souls. 
They were just filled with the words of the Lord 
Jesus. What made the difference ? It was the Holy 
Spirit. "But the Comforter, which is the Holy 
Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He 
shall teach you all things, and bring all things to 
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto 
you." Yes, He will cause you to remember what 
the Lord Jesus has said. My friends, isn't that your 
experience? When the Spirit comes upon you, the 
dew of heaven flashes upon you like a light, and you 
see things in a new beauty. He shall comfort you 
— bring passages to your minds. Look at the bed- 
ridden ones — the afflicted ones. Oh, what comfort 
they have in the truths brought to their remem- 
brance by the Holy Ghost. 



126 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

THE ANCIENT TEMPLE. 

Now, I want to call your attention to three dwell- 
ing places the Holy Spirit has on this earth. In the 
tabernacle of Moses I read that they made a place 
for God to come, and he came in the form of the 
Shekinah cloud. The cloud filled the tabernacle, 
and Moses was not able to enter the tent. I sup- 
pose some in this audience have had that experience. 
God has so filled them with His Spirit that they have 
had to cry, " Stay Thine hand." I have no doubt 
that this was Moses' experience. That tabernacle 
was so filled with the glory of God that he couldn't 
endure it. And then I read again that when the 
Temple was built, the Levites were all with one ac- 
cord in the house, and formed a choir. There was 
no quarreling among the singers there. You know 
lots of churches are troubled with wrangling among 
the singers. I don't see how they can sing at all 
when they are in that condition. If they can't keep 
their hearts warm with the love of God, they can't 
sing the praises of God. The Levites were all with 
one accord in the Temple, and while they were sing- 
ing — notice that there was no preaching — the She- 
kinah cloud came and filled the house of the Lord, 
so that those Levites couldn't go on. I see one of 
them taking out his handkerchief. He breaks down. 
The power came upon them so that the service 
couldn't go on. The glory of God filled that Tem- 
ple. Now, the moment a man opens his heart, 

HIS BODY BECOMES A TEMPLE 

for God to dwell in. Christ says (John xiv, 16): " I 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 127 

will give you another Comforter, that He may abide 
with you forever." It isn't like coming to a relig- 
ious meeting like this and staying for a few minutes. 
"He shall abide." "He shall be in you." Let us 
believe that these bodies are temples of the Holy 
Ghost to dwell in. If He doesn't dwell in our hearts 
it is because we won't have Him — because we are 
living in some dishonorable thing that grieves the 
Holy Ghost. I take the ground very firmly that 
there are three classes of Christians in all our 
churches. I don't think you will find any church 
without these three classes. Nicodemus came to 
Jesus by night, and got life. " How do you know?" 
Why; the next thing he did was to stand up in the 
Sanhedrim and defend Christ, saying: "Doth our 
law judge any man before it hear him, and know 
what he doeth?" And the death of Christ brought 
him out bold. He got life; but I think he didn't get 
life in all its abundance. He just barely got life — 
he didn't get it in all its fullness. If he had got it 
in all its fullness I will tell you what would have 
happened. He would have been brought out of that 
Sanhedrim. He wouldn't have stayed there. But I 
suppose he reasoned in this way: " I am in a high 
position — a position of influence. If I should just 
confess Christ publicly they would put me out of 
the Sanhedrim. I will use my influence over the 
members of the Sanhedrim — my standing and influ- 
ence here in Jerusalem." And do you know, I be- 
lieve that is the very curse of the Church of God — 
this compromising. It is the reason so many Chris- 
tians are dwarfed and haven't got power. They are 



128 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

thinking of worldly honor, worldly power. My 
dear friends, what we want is to be ready to step 
down and out. I believe Nicodemus might have 
been immortalized if he had been willing to step 
down and out of that Sanhedrim, as Moses got out 
of Egpyt, and as Abraham got out from his own 
country — if he had said to his associates: "I believe 
Jesus is the true Messiah, and I will never allow 
these men to talk against Him." I believe he was 
a child of God. He had got life. But He didn't 
have it in its fullness. 

A HIGHER TYPE. 

In the fourth chapter of John we find a higher 
type of Christian. There we read about the woman 
at the well. She got a living spring, bubbling right 
up there in her soul. She got so much of the living 
water that she couldn't hold still, but went among 
her neighbors, saying: " Come, see a man which 
told me all things that ever I did/' And she turned 
that town upside down. I see a lot of men in the 
street talking about politics. This women goes up 
to them and says : " Come down there to the well. 
There is a man who has told me all things that ever 
I did." I can imagine one of these men saying, "I 
think that woman has gone out of her mind." The 
fact is, she was just coming into her right mind. 
She had got so much of the water of life that she 
couldn't hold her peace. Water always rises to its 
level. We bring water into this building from away 
up the mountain, and when it gets into the building 
it just goes into all parts of it. This woman receiv- 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 129 

ed so much of the living water that it carried her up 
into the presence of God, and she became a power in 
the community. She just went back and published 
it. I am afraid if we had that woman in some of 
our churches, people would say : "She has a hard 
reputation — a pretty bad character." I am afraid 
some one would say to her : "I think you had better 
keep still for about six months; and if you turn out 
all right we will take you in." But she didn't wait. 
She just began to testify; and see the marvelous 
results. Many believed on her testimony. "Many 
more believed because of His own Word." 

A STILL HIGHER PLANE. 

But now, in the seventh chapter of John, thirty- 
seventh verse, we read : "In the last day, that great 
day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If 
any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. 
He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture hath said, 
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 
But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that 
believe on Him should receive. " "If any man thirst " 
— that takes in you and me — "out of his heart shall 
flow rivers of living water." Better than showers, 
isn't it ? Better even than a spring. There is a spring 
up here in the mountain that feeds a little brook, 
and that brook, as it runs over the rocks, makes 
quite a little noise. But the grand old Connecticut 
— I never heard it make a noise in my life in this 
town; it just flows on in its course — flows right on. 
That little brook sometimes dries up, with all its 
noise; but the river goes on day and night, Winter 



130 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

and Summer. I believe it is the privilege of every- 
one to have the Spirit of God resting upon him, so 
that he will be just like that river. There are two 
ways of digging a well. One is to dig till you come 
to water, and stop there, though the water won't 
last long. Another is, to dig down and down and 
down till you get a never- failing supply. Some of 
our boys undertook to dig a well lately. When they 
got down six or eight feet they struck water. A 
pump was put in and set pumping, pumping; and 
very soon the well was pumped dry. Then they 
went on again with their digging till they struck a 
rock, and the water burst right up. They thought 
thejr had got deep enough that time. But when the 
pump was set to work, it wasn't many days till the 
well was dry again. We said we musn't stop till we 
get to where the water couldn't be exhausted. So 
we went on down and down till we struck clay, and 
then gravel, and then flinty rock; and at last we got 
to a lower stratum that yielded a never-failing sup- 
ply of water. Now, it is the privilege of every child 
of God 

TO HAVE AN ARTESIAN WELL 

that can never be pumped dry. I remember that 
when I was a boy we used to have to pump water 
for the cattle. Sometimes a man pumped and pumped, 
and didn't get anything. You have got to have water 
in a well before you get it out. Lots of men in the 
pulpit are pumping, pumping, without any effect ; 
but if you have an artesian well, it just flows itself 
— springing right up— constraining you to speak. 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 131 

Some English people once emigrated to a strange 
country intending to settle. They stopped at one 
place, but the natives told them they had better not 
— at a certain season of the year everything dried up 
there. So they went on until they came to a second 
place, and were intending to settle there, but again 
they were told that at a certain season of the year 
everything dried up. On they went again till they 
got to a place where the mountains pierced the 
clouds, and they could always have water. I re- 
member the first time I went to California, I stood 
in a valley and saw a ranch. I noticed that in one 
section everything was green — everything was all 
vegetation. But just where you crossed a fence, 
everything was dried up. It was another ranch, and 
there was hardly a green thing there. I thought 
that was very curious, and I said to a farm hand : 
" Can you explain that ? — how on one side of the 
fence things are all green and on the other side all 
dried up?" "Oh, yes," said the farm hand; "this 
man irrigates — he brings water down from the 
mountain, and just irrigates his farm. That man 
don't." I think that is the way with a good many 
Christians in the churches. Some are all dried up ; 
but others have got a secret communication between 
their souls and Heaven, and God sends the water to 
them and 

KEEPS THEM ALWAYS FRESH. 

You may be as dry as Gideon's fleece — all dried up — 
no power at all; but it is the privilege of each one of 
us to have the dew of Heaven resting upon us all the 
while. That is what God wants. Are you thirsty ? 



132 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

I sometimes wish we had in all our churches a meet- 
ing for hungry and thirsty Christians. I would put 
a man at the door so as not to let anybody else in. 
Let him ask every one : " Are you hungry ? Are you 
thirsty ?" They wouldn't know what you meant, 
some of them. Lots of people go to prayer-meeting 
because it is customary. They go year after year — 
go for nothing, and get nothing. They are not in 
earnest about anything. Now, it seems to me that 
if we could have a meeting in all our churches of 
two, three, four, or five Christians, dead in earnest- 
wanting the baptism of the Spirit, and the power of 
God resting upon them — there would be a wonderful 
difference. If they were really in earnest in asking 
for the gift of the Holy Ghost they would get it. 
But, I tell you, you have got to stoop to get that. 
God isn't going to give it to those who are careless 
and indifferent. But if you and I really want it — 
want it above everything else — then I believe God 
will give it. " Blessed are they which do hunger 
and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be 
filled." Are you hungry and thirsty after righteous- 
ness ? I like that " shall be." " They shall be filled." 
My brother, are you filled ? Put the question right 

to yourself. 

"are you filled?" 

I think I could have said "Amen" to almost 
everything in this morning's service; but I couldn't 
quite agree with Dr. Gordon when he said a man 
could empty himself. I have heard a great many 
people say we should empty our hearts so as to let 
the Holy Spirit come in. Well; I know I can't empty 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 133 

my heart. I can't get pride out of my heart. I can't 
get jealousy out of my heart. I wish I could. I haven't 
got the power. But if a man desires above every- 
thing else that he may grow smaller and smaller as 
John the Baptist did — if it his desire that he shall 
decrease and Christ increase; then I believe the Lord 
will pour the water down so that it will crowd out 
all these things. Sometimes in trying to make a 
pump work I used to see if I could pump all the air 
out so as to get the water up. After trying a while 
that way, I would get some water and pour it in 
from the top, and that would crowd the air out. 
When a man finds that he can't empty his heart, 
what he wants is just to let the w r aterinfrom above. 
Get under the fountain. Let the living flood come 
down upon us. It will drive out conceit — drive out 
everything. Oh, yes; what we want is to get under 
the fountain. "I will pour floods upon the dry 
ground." " I will pour water upon him that is 
thirsty." We can every one of us get a baptism of 
the Spirit. You remember that when Christ met 
His disciples after the resurrection, He breathed upon 
them, saying : " Eeceive ye the Holy Ghost." Sup- 
pose they had said: "We have received the Holy 
Ghost. It was by the power of the Holy Ghost we 
left all and followed Thee." " Ah," He would have 
said, " I have yet greater blessings in store for you." 
I hear people ask, " Have you got the second bless- 
ing ?" But a second blessing isn't enough. There 
may be 

A GREAT MANY BLESSINGS. 

I think a good many people make a mistake in stop- 



134 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

ping there. Suppose that when Christ breathed 
upon His disciples, saying, "Keceive ye the Holy 
Ghost," Peter had said, "Lord, we have got it now. 
You have breathed upon us. Now we are ready to 
go out and preach. Men will be converted by the 
power of the Holy Ghost. We are ready to go." 
" Ah, Peter," He would have said, "I am going to 
give it to you in greater measure. Tarry at Jerusa- 
lem. " Suppose Peter had preached before the descent 
of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, what do you think 
would have happened ? I believe there wouldn't 
have been a* soul converted. But the disciples testi- 
fied at Jerusalem till the Spirit came upon them; and 
then they began to preach, and multitudes were con- 
verted. What was the reason ? Why, what was 
the message ? A risen Christ— a glorified Christ. 
They began to proclaim the tidings that "that same 
Jesus, whom ye have crucified, God hath made both 
Lord and Christ." Now, a great many times I hear 
people say — very good men come to me and say : 
" But, you know, at Pentecost the Holy Ghost came 
with a rushing, mighty wind, so that the place was 
shaken. It isn't Scriptural to pray that" the Holy 
Ghost may come in such power as to shake the place 
again. We musn't look for miraculous power." 
But I believe 

PENTECOST WAS JUST A SPECIMEN. 

I believe if as Christians we had faith, this place 
might be shaken. If we prayed for Pentecostal 
power, I believe we could get it — we could get Pen- 
tecostal showers right here to-day. In the fourth 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 135 

chapter of Acts, Peter and John were cast into 
prison. Then they were brought before the Sanhe- 
drim. The rulers didn't dare to put them to death, 
because the whole city was filled with young con- 
verts, so they just said to them: "Now, you can 
preach all you want to, so long as you don't preach 
in the name of Jesus." Some preachers get along 
very well without mentioning the name of Jesus. 
Their sermons are all about philosophy and morality. 
But Peter and John didn't know anything about 
those sciences. They were just fishermen, and knew 
nothing but Calvary. They were only witnesses. 
The rulers said to them: "You can preach all you 
want to, if you don't preach any more in the name 
of Jesus." Well; they had another prayer-meeting, 
and they prayed for power to go out and preach 
boldly. "And when they had prayed, the place 
was shaken* where they were assembled together, 
and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." 
That is the way we want to pray. "What! pray 
for the supernatural V Yes; we have got to have 
supernatural power to proclaim the Gospel. In this 
fourth chapter of Acts it says the place was shaken 
again, and those men were all filled again. Now, 
those men had lost their power, or else they had 
great capacity — I don't know which — but 

THEY WERE FILLED AGAIN. 

Suppose I had more power four or five years ago 
than I have to-day, what ought I to do ? Why, as 
soon as I discovered that, I ought to pray to be filled 
again. Lots of people are like Samson— shorn of 



136 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

their locks. What did Samson do ? He let his hair 
grow out, and got his strength back again. These 
men that have lost their power — they can get it back 
again if they will. Ah, thank God; if He used Peter 
once, He could use him again. My friends, have 
you lost your power with God ? If you have, don't 
rest day or night till you get it back again. The 
greatest honor you can ever have is to have the 
power of God resting upon you. They say it isn't 
Scriptural to pray that the place may be shaken — to 
pray for the Holy Ghost as Peter and John did at 
Jerusalem. My dear friends, I think it is perfectly 
Scriptural to pray that the Holy Ghost may fall upon 
us as it fell upon them. Have you worked hard day 
after day, and seen little results ? The power of the 
Holy Ghost is w~hat you want. Here is a brother 
from Texas, who tells me he hasn't got power. Oh, 
dear brother, you can get this power. Here is a 
brother from South Carolina, who wants to see a 
great work of God in that State. My brother, you 
needn't send for this man or that man to go down to 
South Carolina. You can get this power, and then 
go out yourself in the name of Jehovah. Here is a 
lady from Tennessee, who is burdened for that State. 
My dear sister, pray that the Spirit may fall upon 
you, and then you can be a mighty instrument for 
God in that old State. I don't think we have 

GOT THE FAINTEST IDEA 

what God wants to do with us. We haven't begun 
to understand the meaning of that passage : ' 'Greater 
things than these shall ye do." When the Spirit 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 137 

came upon those disciples they were to do greater 
things than Jesus Christ did. I used to think there 
could be no greater things than the miracles of 
Christ; but the longer I live the more it seems to me 
that the greatest miracle this world has ever seen is 
that revival at Pentecost. Three thousand Jews 
converted in one day! — with their minds set against 
God, their wills set against God, their hearts set 
against God. They hated with a perfect hatred the 
name of Jesus. They thought He wasn't fit to walk 
the streets of Jerusalem. And yet three thousand 
of those men were converted under one sermon. 
That was one of the greatest miracles this world 
has ever seen. I suppose when Christ ascended 
from this earth He left in the world not more than a 
thousand disciples. We only read of three hundred. 
Yet here were three thousand in one day! And that 
was only the beginning. I was rejoiced to hear Dr. 
Gordon speak about our getting the first fruits. I 
don't know what might not happen if this audience 
should rise as one man and say, " God helping us, 
we are going into the harvest field. We will buckle 
on the whole armor, and preach the risen Christ — 
preach the glorified Christ — tell the people that 
Christ has been down here in this dark world; that 
He suffered and died, that He burst asunder the 
bonds of death, led captivity captive, and now sits 
on the Throne." Why, do you know, that there 
are people around here who don't know that — don't 
know Christ came out of Joseph's sepulchre. Hun- 
dreds of people right in this town don't know Christ 



138 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

is out of Joseph's sepulchre. Let us go and preach 
it. My dear brother, 

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET ANOINTED? 

I believe if you pray for this anointing, the Holy 
Ghost will just come upon you so that every time 
you speak some one will bless you — every time 
you open your lips your testimony will have power. 
Wouldn't you like power? Wouldn't you like to be 
used of God? Wouldn't you like to see God looking 
down from his throne, and smiling — just blessing 
you? If you would, do you know what to do? Let 
your will be swallowed up in His will. Say to Him: 
" Lord, use me. I want to be Thine for time and 
eternity. I want to be Thine soul and body. I want 
that Thou shouldst take me and fill me." If you 
ask Him, the Lord will fill you. He wants to do it. 
You remember, when Elijah was taken away, what 
happened. Elisha was greatly afflicted to think 
Elijah was going to leave him. Elijah says to 
Elisha, " Stay here. I am going to Bethel.'' Elisha 
says, "As the Lord lives, I will not leave thee." 
Elijah says, "Then let's go to Bethel, and see how 
the prophets are getting along." When they get to 
Bethel, Elijah says, "Now, you stay here, and I'll 
go to Jericho. " There was a school of young prophets 
at Jericho, like the school we have here at Mount 
Hermon. Elisha says, "As the Lord lives I will go 
with you." The two men go on to Jericho together. 
At Jericho, the sons of the prophets come to Elisha 
and say, "Do you know that your master is to be 
taken away to-day?" "Sh — sh — ," says Elisha, "I 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 139 

know all about it. " Presently Elijah turns and says, 
' * Elisha, you stay here, and I will go over to the Jordan 
and worship." Elisha says, " As the Lord lives, and 
as thy soul lives, I will go with you." So the two 
go down to the Jordan together. As they walk on, 
they talk. I have often wished their conversation 
had been put on record. I like to think about it. 
I have an idea it was something like this. Elijah 
says to Elisha: " Is there anything you want? Don't 
be afraid to ask. You seem to be very timid." 
Elisha says: "Yes, there is something I want." 
" Well, don't be afraid to ask. 

YOU SHALL HAVE WHATEVER YOU WANT." 

My friends, what a statement? "All you ask 
for. Make a request, and you will have all you ask 
for." Well, what did he ask? Did he ask for as 
much of the Spirit as Elijah had? That would have 
been a great thing. Talk about kings. Kings are 
in the habit of ordering their subjects around. Here 
was a subject who was in the habit of ordering 
kings around. Ah! a man who is in communion 
with God has power. Talk about the power of 
Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander— the great generals 
and warriors of this earth. Why, it is nothing to 
the power of the man who is in communion with 
God. Elijah wasn't going to ask for a small 
thing. I suppose he thought: "Now, Elijah has 
given me a "blank check; I will fill it out." So he 
says: "I want a double portion of Thy spirit." I 
can see Elijah turn around to him in surprise, and 
say: " You have asked me a hard thing." But he 



140 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

says: " If you see me when I am taken from you, 
you shall have it." "Then," says Elisha, " you'll 
not get away without my seeing you." He wanted 
a double portion of Elijah's spirit, and he was deter- 
mined to get it. So he took good care to see him in 
the chariot, and he did see him. Well, they go 
down to the banks of the river together — arm in 
arm, like David and Jonathan. Some wonderful 
stories have taken place on that river; one of the 
most wonderful is going to take place now. The 
two prophets march boldly into the water, and go 
over dry shod. Fifty of the prophets are up there 
on the side hills. There they sit watching. They 
see this wonderful miracle. I suppose when they 
saw Elijah and Elisha go through the bed of that river 
dry shod, all their talk was about Elijah. They had 
hardly ever heard of Elisha. He was only an ordin- 
ary farmer — just living on Elijah. He hadn't per- 
formed any miracle, for any he had ever performed 
had been associated with Elijah. But as Elijah and 
Elisha go on together — talking and talking — sud- 
denly there comes a chariot from Heaven, and bears 
Elijah away. Elisha is not going to let him go 
away without letting him know he sees him ; so he 
lifts up his voice and cries: " My father, my father ! 
the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." 
He sends his voice right up after him. 

AH ! ELIJAH HEARS HIM. 

He takes off his mantle, and throws it down to 
Elisha. Elisha sees the old mantle lying there on 
the ground. He picks it up and puts it on. I sup- 



THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 141 

pose when those fifty prophets see him coming out 
of the desert alone, they say: "Well, Elijah has 
been caught up. We'll never see him again, and 
we'll never see anymore like him." When Elisha 
walks down to the bank of the river, they say: " He 
never can cross it. The Jordan won't divide for him. 
There is no bridge for him to walk on — and there's no 
boatman to take him over. How is he going to get 
across that stream?" Elisha stands on the bank of 
the river. I see him lift up his voice to God in 
prayer, saying: "Lord God of Elijah, hear me! 
This promised double portion of His spirit has come. 
Let me test it now." And the power of God up- 
holds him. The Jordan obeys him. He starts into 
the stream, and goes through it dry shod. As he 
comes up out of the river the fifty prophets lift up 
their voices, and they say: " The spirit of Elijah is 
upon Elisha." But he had more than the spirit of 
Elijah. Elisha performed just twice the number of 
miracles that Elijah did. 

My friends, the God of Elijah is on the throne. 
Jesus Christ has come down from Heaven since 
then; and it is so wonderful to ask for the influence 
of the Spirit ? Why, we ought to have ten times 
more power than Elijah had. Yes ; we ought to 
have a hundred times more power than Elijah and 
Elisha had. Let us pray for this double portion of 
the Spirit. The difficulty is, we have been living on 
a lower plane. Let us pray that God will fill us 
with the Holy Ghost. Let us pray that He will send 
the Spirit into our cold churches and Sabbath-schools, 
that are now so stiff and formal. Let us orav God 



142 THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

that we will have power to overcome this stiffness. 
Let us pray God that streams of salvation shall 
break out all over the country. Let us pray to the 
God of Elijah, and let us pray that the fire may come 
down and burn up all the dross in our hearts — all 
that is not pleasing in the sight of God — and that we 
may be filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us bow our 
heads. 

Dr. Pierson then led in prayer. 

Dr. Pentecost followed in a very able and interest- 
ing address on the same subject. 



ON SANCTIFICATION. 143 



ON SANCTIFICATION. 



On Wednesday forenoon, Dr. Munhall, of Indian- 
apolis, spoke on "Sanctification," as follows: 
"Some important truths have fallen into disfavor 
among Christian people, because of the absurd views 
of the extremists. When a pendulum swings too far 
on one side, it will be sure to swing too far on the 
other. Because of the strange notions of certain 
Adventurists and faith-healers, the Christian Church 
has allowed itself to lose sight altogether of the doc- 
trines of healing by faith and the Second Coming. 
What we want to do is to find out the truth for our- 
selves, regardless of prejudice. Sanctification is 
clearly enjoined in Scripture. (See Leviticus xi, 44; 
I Thess. iv, 3; and I Pet. i, 13-16.) Christians can- 
not be used without sanctification. (Exodus xxix, 
44; John xvi, 19; I Tim. ii, 21.) The words " sanc- 
tification," " consecration," and " holiness," in their 
primary sense, are used interchangeably. As to the 
primary meaning, there is involved the thought of 
dedication. (II Sam. vhi, 11; Lev. xxvii, 28.) In 
the secondary meaning, the ideas are embraced of 
justification, sanctification, etc. Then, considering 
the question as related to our standing before God, 
he ref ered to the following texts: Ex. xxix, 37; I 
Thess. ix, 13;IJohn iv, 17; Jude 24; Col. i, 28. All 



144 ON SANCTIFICATIOlSf. 

these passages show that man stands before God jus- 
tified in virtue of Christ's imputed righteousness. 
In contradistinction from that, a sanctified person 
stands before God possessing imparted righteous- 
ness. See I Tim. ii, 19; Rom. viii, 13; II Cor. ix, 27; 
Gal. v, 24. These passages all show what is required 
of us after justification, in the direction of sanctifi- 
cation. Our greatest enemy is the old man. No 
one should say, " I am sanctified, and therefore can- 
not sin." A sanctified man is like a field in which 
the tops of the weeds have been cut off. The roots 
are there, and under rain and sunshine they will 
spring up again. Luther was asked if he was not 
afraid of the Pope. He said he was more afraid of 
the Pope inside his own heart than of the Pope at 
Rome. I am more troubled over Munhall than I am 
over any of my neighbors. In a judicial sense, the 
old man was put to death in the person of Christ. 
(Gal. v, 24; Rom. vi, 6.) Rom. vi, 1 1 , indicates how 
this fact may be made of practical value to us. The 
old man is not dead, but he is to be reckoned as dead 
by the exercise of faith. On our unquestioning and 
continuous faith in this truth depends the real death 
of the old man in us, if we yield ourselves to the will 
of God to do what He wishes in us. God, who saves 
the sinner, can keep him from the domination of sin. 
It is God who sanctifies. (I Thess. v, 23). Sancti- 
fication is in Christ. I Cor. i, 30. It is of the Spirit. 
(II Thess. ii, 13). It is through the truth (John 
xvii, 17). It is by faith (Gal. iii, 5). 

Now, as to the results. The results of sanctification 
are: 1. Separation (II Cor. vi, 17). 2. Emancipa- 



ON SANCTIFICATION. 145 

tion from love of the world (I John ii, 15). 3. A for- 
giving spirit (Eph. iv, 32). 4. Purity of speech 
(Eph. v, 4). 5. Cleanliness of body (II Cor. viii, 1). 
6. Weights laid aside (Heb. xii, 1). 7. Life, charac- 
terized by good works and zeal for Christ (Heb. xiii, 
21), Wearing a sour countenance is not sanctifica- 
tion. Some people are so sanctified they forget to 
work. When a man is so infatuated with sanctifi- 
cation that he cannot work for Christ, he is simply 
infatuated with himself. We want zeal. We want 
"cranks" like John the Baptist. Let us get out of 
Egypt by a Eed Sea deliverance, and into the prom- 
ised land. 

At the close Dr. Munhall called upon those who 
had either dedicated themselves to God or wished to 
do so to rise. Nearly all arose. 

Dr. Pentecost followed in a few remarks, laying 
stress upon the fact that our sanctification is in 
Christ. We are too much given to seeking experi- 
ences for their sake alone. What we want is the 
giver. He told a story of how he used to come home 
from his evangelistic tours, always bringing his little 
daughter a present. He noticed, however, with 
pain, that she seemed to care more for the presents 
than for himself — rushing to examine his satchel be- 
fore greeting him. So one time he came home 
without any present. She asked what he had brought 
her. Said he: u I have brought you myself." She 
comprehended his meaning, and burst into tears — 
never having realized how the habit was growing 
upon her. Let us seek Christ — be identified with 
Christ, and sanctification will follow. 



146 ON SANCTIFICATION. 

Mr. Moody said: "I'd like to give yon my short- 
cut to sanctification in five words, ' Be filled with 
the Spirit. '" 

At the afternoon meeting brief addresses were 
made by various Christian workers. Mr. Albert 
Woodruff, of Brooklyn, spoke of Sunday-school 
work in Europe. Mr. F. G. Ensign, of Chicago, 
told of the work of the American Sunday-school 
Union in the Northwest. Professor Wayland, of 
Yale College, New Haven, spoke strongly on the 
utility of mission Sunday-schools in the neglected 
parts of large cities, in connection with parent 
churches. 

DR. PIERSON ON PRAYER MEETINGS. 

The question, " How to Conduct Prayer Meetings F 
was discussed, Dr. Pierson making the first address. 
He said that in Bethany Church, Philadelphia, they 
had a prayer-meeting attended by six to eight hun- 
dred people, and he regarded the prayer-meeting as 
next in importance to the proclaiming of the Gospel. 
First, he said, drop all stiffness and f ormahty. Let 
the leader avoid sermonizing or lecturing. He 
should just open the meeting with a brief exposition 
of some passage of Scripture. Let him cultivate a col- 
loquial style of speaking. The leader should come to 
the meeting fresh from his closet. Let him carry the 
atmosphere of Heaven to the meeting with him. It 
would be well if the people would come from their 
closets, too. Then there would be none of the 
Spirit of criticism. Have good, cheerful, lively sing- 
ing. Then bring out testimony from young Chris- 



ON SANCTIFICATION. 147 

tians. Let them bring reports from any special 
work in which they are engaged. That will give 
you a subject for prayer. People sometimes go to 
prayer-meeting with the vaguest possible notion of 
what to pray for. Let your young people tell how 
they are getting along in their special work for 
Christ. That will incite prayer by furnishing objects 
of supplication. Let the prayers be short and right 
to the point. We have too many formal, systematic 
and stereotyped prayers. What we want is to get 
people to leave off the " preamble and resolutions." 
Let them begin right in the middle, and stop without 
thinking how they are going to close. In that way 
you can have fifteen or twenty people pray in the 
course of five or ten minutes. Let each one pray 
for the one burden on his heart. Don't let any one 
pray too long. It is hard sometimes to get people to 
rise to their feet; it is often a great deal harder to 
get them to sit down. If a man doesn't know how 
time goes, get some one to pull his coat tail. It does 
no harm to stop in the middle of a sentence. Some- 
times it helps immensely. 

REMARKS BY MR. MOODY. 

Mr. Moody said: There is another thing we want, 
and that is ventilation. A good many prayer-meet- 
ings are failures. There is a deadness in them. 
What is the reason ? Bad air. Many prayer-meet- 
ings are held in the basements of churches where 
there is bad air — you would think it was the same 
air year after year. People can't help going to sleep. 
Now, I think the minister ought to take an interest 



148 ON SANCTIFICATTOtf. 

in getting fresh air. He ought to see that the audi- 
ence don't lack for ventilation, and that the air is 
sweet. When a man has been working hard out in 
the fields all day, in a pure atmosphere, and then 
comes into a room where the air is close, the chances 
are that he will go to sleep before the meeting is one- 
quarter over. Another thing: Have new hymns. 
Don't sing only "Kock of Ages," and " Jesus, Lover 
of My Soul." I don't see how people can go on sing- 
ing the same hymns year in and year out. In a 
great many prayer-meetings they have about twelve 
hymns that they sing year after year. We want 
variety. Get new hymns and solos as well as the 
old ones. Another thing: Let the leader give the 
meeting a sort of key- note, and then get out of the 
way. Many men kill a meeting by talking too much. 
They tell you they are unprepared, and you will find 
it out before they get through. They have no busi- 
ness to be unprepared. Don't talk, talk, just to fill 
up the time. Time is precious. Another thing: If 
you have a man who is in the habit of making a long 
prayer, go right to him and tell him you can't have 
it. More meetings are made cold by long prayers 
than by any other one thing. My experience is, a 
man who makes a prayer fifteen minutes long in 
public doesn't pray much at home. A man in the 
habit of praying at home knows how to pray short. 
He won't take much time to make his wants known. 
Now, you know very well that young people don't 
come into the churches as they ought to. What 
keeps them out ? Long prayers. If a man makes 
long prayers, tell him you can't allow it. You don't 



ON SANCTIFICATION. 149 

want to hurt his feelings ? Better hurt his feelings 
than hurt the cause of Christ. If a man can't take 
a rebuke, he isn't in the right spirit of prayer. A 
man once said to me: "I am carried away by the 
Spirit, and I forget myself." "Well," I said, "I 
will have a man sit next to you and pull your coat." 
We arranged it that way; and the next time, a man 
pulled his coat several times, so that he only prayed 
two or three minutes. When a man has prayed five 
minutes, the bulk of the people will pray to have 
him stop. They can't think of what he is praying 
about — they are thinking U I wish that man would 
stop," and, by the time he stops, their minds have 
got into another channel. It seems to me a man 
ought not to pray longer than a minute. A minute 
is one hundred and eighty words. Another thing : 
If ajnan doesn't stand well in the community, don't 
let him take part. Go right to him and say: "You 
must clear up your record before you take part." A 
good many churches have lost all their power because 
they don't look after this. If a man doesn't pay his 
debts, if he isn't honest in his business transactions, 
upright in his moral character, you don't want him 
to take part. These men drive people from the 
prayer-meeting. Now we want to talk about music. 
After a hymn, Mr. Moody introduced the subject 
of music. Addresses were made by Mr. H. L Hast- 
ings, of Boston; Mr. McGranahan, and Mr. Sankey. 
Mr. Sankey also answered a number of questions 
put to him by several of the leading speakers and 
by persons in the audience. 



150 ON SANCTIFICATION. 

The Rev. Jacob Freshman, of New York, described 
his work among the eighty thousand Jews of the 
metropolis. Mr. Moody became greatly interested 
in his recital, and called for contributions in aid of 
his work. Mr. Freshman received $171, and after- 
wards the gift of an organ from Colonel Estey, of 
Brattleboro, Vt. 



THE SECOND COMING. 151 



THE SECOND COMING. 



Mr. Moody, in opening the forenoon meeting, said 
he hoped all would listen in a kindly spirit. If the 
post-millenarians — those who believe Christ will 
not come till the end of the thousand years — had any- 
thing to say, they would have a chance. He had 
held the pre-millennial theory since 1867. 

The Rev. W. W. Clark, of Staten Island, exhibited 
two colored charts which brought out vividly the 
marvelous correspondence between prophecy and 
history in relation to the second coming of Christ. 
The belief in the pre-millennial coming of Christ, he 
said, is the corner-stone of all interpretation of 
prophecy. The dispensations displayed in the charts 
were: That of conscience — froni Adam to Abraham; 
that of promise — from Abraham to Moses; that of 
law — from Moses to Christ; that of the Church — 
from the day of Pentecost to the second coming; 
that of tribulation — from Christ's coming for His 
saints to His appearing with them; that of the Mil- 
lennium — covering the one thousand years when 
Christ shall reign on earth, at the ending of which 
the wicked dead shall be raised and judged before 
the great white throne. Jesus told His disciples to 
look for His coming. That duty is incumbent upon 
us to-day. The translation of Enoch and Elijah was 



152 THE SECOND COMING. 

probably designed to show us how the translation 
of the righteous who may be living when Christ 
conies shall occur. 

Dr. Pierson said he opposed this doctrine stoutly 
for twenty years, but now he believed he was then 
in error. He was not bound to any system of de- 
tails, however. He simply believed Christ is coming 
a second time, at the end of the present dispensa- 
tion. His belief in this doctrine had so strengthened 
his ardor in behalf of foreign missions that lie was 
sometimes thought fanatical on that subject. From 
this doctrine we get a conception of the work that 
is to be done in this dispensation. Let us get hold 
of the idea that the Church is to be taken out of the 
world. The Church is becoming worldly. Don't 
expect that the w^orld is to be incorporated in Christ; 
men are to withdraw from the world to reach Christ. 
Our Lord is to take a people unto Himself out of the 
world. He believed the greatest inspiration to all 
kinds of Gospel work lies in this doctrine of the 
second coming, 

Mr. Needham said, in his opinion, when any 
Christian read the Scriptures for himself, free from 
prejudice or pre-conceived notions, he was naturally 
led to a belief in the second coming. Nothing does 
so much as this doctrine to wean believers from 
worldly entanglements. If we really believe Christ 
might come at any moment, we wouldn't be found 
at theatres and card parties. 

In the afternoon Dr. Gordon was the leading 
speaker. He said he came to believe in this doctrine 
five years after coming out of a theological semi- 



THE SECOND COMING. 153 

nary, and now considered it as well-grounded as the 
doctrine of the vicarious atonement. He went into 
the subject exhaustively, quoting very freely from 
Scripture. "What was the practical bearing of the 
doctrine? We are told to watch. Sobriety is en- 
joined. Purity is advised — entreated. The world 
is being prepared for Christ's coming. Missionaries 
are kindling flames in China, Japan, Turkey, Africa 
— all over the globe. He would close in the words 
of Christ Himself: "What I say unto one, I say 
unto aU, Watch!" 



154 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 



Address to Young Men. 



You will find my text this evening in the sixth 
chapter of Galatians, seventh, eighth, and ninth 
verses: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for 
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap 
corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of 
the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be 
weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, 
if we faint not. " You who were here last Wednes- 
day night remember that we had for our text, 
" Their rock is not as our rock, even our enemies 
themselves being judges," and then we tried to find 
a text which everyone would admit was true. I 
think that we have one to-night that no infidel, no 
skeptic, or deist can attack. There are some pas- 
sages which we do not have to prove by the Word of 
God, but merely by our own experience. Your own 
fives will prove many passages in Scripture. You 
can take up the daily papers and see them fulfilled 
under your own eyes. This is one of them. Per- 
haps there has not been a text of Scripture run out 
in this Tabernacle as this one has. Night after night 
we have said something about it; night after night 

•' From " Great Joy," by permission of E. B. Treat, Publisher. 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 155 

Mr. Sankey lias sung out, " Whatsoever a man sow- 
eth that shall he also reap." My friends, we cannot 
quote it too often. We want to quote it, and preach 
it till it gets down to the hearts of the people. Now, 
it is very natural to be deceived. I suppose there 
is not a man or woman here but who has been de- 
ceived by his or her most intimate friends. You 
have been deceived by your own friends, and you 
have been deceived by your enemies, and how many 
could rise up here and say they have not been de- 
ceived by themselves ? How many of us have found 
our own heart more treacherous than anything else ? 
How many of us have not found the truth of that 
passage, -"The heart of man is deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked." We can be deceit- 
ful to each other, to our friends and to ourselves, but 
bear in mind we cannot deceive God. How often 
does- man find that Satan had deceived him ? But 
has he ever found God deceiving him ? I have never 
found a man who has said that he has been or that 
he has heard of anybody whom God has deceived. 
How many times has man said he has been deceived 
by his fellows — by his own treacherous heart ; and 
our experience in this direction only shows that we 
cannot rely upon man, upon ourselves, but only 
upon God. 

Now, it is a law of nature that if a man sows he 
will reap what he sows. If a man sows water- 
melons, he don't look for cauliflowers; if a man sows 
potatoes, he don't look for cabbages; if he sows 
onions, he don't look for corn. If he plants potatoes, 
he expects potatoes; if he sows corn, he looks for 



156 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

corn; or wheat, he expects to reap wheat. So, in 
the natural world, a man expects to reap what he 
sows. If a man learns a carpenter's or a builder's 
trade, he expects to put up buildings for a living. 
If a man toils and studies hard for a profession — if 
he is a lawyer, he expects to practice law. He don't 
expect to have to preach the Gospel for a living. He 
has been sowing for years, and he expects to reap. 
As a man sows, so he expects to reap. This the law 
in the natural world, and so it is with the spiritual : 
" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall 
be comforted;" " Blessed are the peacemakers, 
for they shall be called the children of God;" 
" Blessed are they which hunger and thirst for 
righteousness' sake." Why? Because they shall 
get rich ? No — "for they shall be filled." Now, you 
will see that a certain result is the product of 
certain conditions. This is the law which you will 
find carried out all through the world, in natural 
and spiritual things. If a man is a thief, you expect 
to see him come to an ignominious end. If a man is 
drunken and dissipated, we look, as a natural con- 
sequence of his dissipation, to see him go to ruin. 
Yet men themselves don't see this; their eyes are 
closed to their folly. A friend who was coming 
down with me to-night said : " When I look back, I 
see that I started wrong when I came here. It seems 
as if I must have been blind. I did not see this till 
within the last two or three weeks." My friends, 
that's what Satan does with a man — he just blinds 
him, and when he has got a man blinded he does 
anything he wants with him. It is very hard to 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 15 i 

make men understand this simple truth, that they 
will have to reap what they sow, especially young 
men from seventeen to twenty-one. That, you 
know, is the ugly age. There is more trouble with 
them then than at any other stage. I remember 
when I was at that age. I knew a good deal more 
than my mother or any of my friends. You take a 
young man at that age, and you'll find he knows a 
great deal more than his father, his grandfather, or 
even his great-grandfather, all put together. "He is 
wise in his own conceit." It is during that ugly age 
that characters are forming for good or evil; and 
bear in mind, you young men, that " Whatsoever a 
mansoweth that shall he also reap." If a man sows 
tares, he has got to reap them. It may not be to-mor- 
row, or next week, or next year, but the time of reaping 
will assuredly come, and when the reaping time comes 
you will moan bitterly; then you will like to change 
places with those Christians whom you despise now. 
When the reaping time comes you would give a 
good deal if you could exchange places with the 
humblest-looking Christian. I suppose that Cain 
would give a good deal to exchange places with Abel 
to-night. Do you think Pilate would not like to 
change places with Elijah, with Obadiah, or Peter, 
to-night ? Don't you think the Emperor Nero would 
like to exchange places now with Paul ? Paul is 
reaping what he sowed, and so is Nero. All through 
Scripture you can see proof of this text. Don't you 
think that the rich man at whose door the beggar 
Lazarus lay would like to exchange places with that 
poor Christian now ? Bear in mind that you may 



158 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

look upon Christians with contempt, but the 
time is coming when you will give anything to ex- 
change places with the meanest Christian that walks 
the streets of Chicago. 

I used to believe twenty years ago in this text, but 
I believe it more now than ever I did. The longer I 
live the more I become convinced of its awful truth. 
You know I used to live in Chicago, and I used to 
go from house to house among the poor, and in going 
among the poor I gained no little experience of the 
rich people. In visiting the poor I became acquaint- 
ed with a good many rich families, and there is 
scarcely a week passes now but I hear of rich fami- 
lies who have gone down to ruin. Just this after- 
noon I heard of a family who, twenty years ago, 
occupied a position among the best. They had a 
beautiful daughter, w T ho could have adorned any 
station, and a lovely home, and I heard to-day that 
they had gone down to ruin. They looked upon 
Christianity with scorn and contempt. The father 
brought the children up to treat all religion with 
contempt, and his sons have gone down to their 
graves drunkards, and his daughter has died of a 
broken heart. Yes, a man who sows tares must 
reap them, and sometimes the harvest is a whirl- 
wind. 

Now, just let us divide that text up — not 
that I want to preach under different heads, but 
just for the sake of greater clearness. When a 
man sows he expects to reap. This truth must 
be admitted first. A farmer that planted grain and 
never reaped his fields, you would say had gone clear 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 159 

mad. No man sows that doesn't expect to reap. 
That is just what he does expect to do. The next 
point: A man always expects to reap more than he 
sowed. If he sows a handful of grain, he expects 
to get from that handful a bushel, and if he sows 
a bushel he expects a harvest of five hundred 
bushels. And just so it isan spiritual matters. If 
a man scatters handfuls of tares in spiritual things, 
his spiritual harvest will be bushels of tares, and 
not wheat. Whatever he sows he shall reap; just 
that and nothing more; and if he sows the wind 
he must reap the whirlwind. A man must expect 
a harvest of just the kind that his seed is; and this 
great law is even more true of spiritual growth than 
of natural growth. If a man is bad and corrupt in 
his thoughts, you can tell precisely what his deeds 
will be. 

If a man is profane and blasphemous, look to his 
children to be the same; if a father is a lying man, 
his children will grow up to deceive him just as he 
deceived others. A bad boy is too often the living 
penalty of the sins of his parents; they have sown 
and watered, and now he is reaping the punishment. 
Another point: if a man sows, he must reap the 
fruit, no matter how ignorant he may claim to be, 
or really be, of the nature of the seed. A plea of 
ignorance won't do. You sow tares and think 
it wheat, but nothing but tares will spring up. You 
may call it wheat, or rye, or grain, of whatever 
name you please, but you get nothing but weeds 
and tares. You must look to what kind of seed 
you are sowing, for neither ignorance nor any other 



160 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

excuse can make tares bring forth wheat. And 
now, see how true that is, in regard not only to 
individuals but nations. Nations are only collections 
of individuals, and what is true of the part in 
regard to character is always true of the whole. In 
this country our forefathers planted slavery in the 
face of an open Bible, and didn't we have to reap? 
When the harvest came nearly half a million of 
your young men were buried, many of them in a 
nameless grave. Didn't God make this nation weep 
in the hour of gathering the harvest, when we had 
to give up our young men, both North and South, 
to death; and every household almost had an empty 
chair, and blood, blood, blood, flowed like water for 
four long years? Ah, our nation sowed, and how 
in tears and groans she had to reap! 

Then look at that king in Egypt. He made a 
decree that all the male infants should be put to 
death; and to death they were put, with all the 
horrors that hatred and jealousy could invent. It 
was terrible. Well, now, I suppose some people 
think it strange that God didn't punish Egypt with 
swift destruction. But look, the punishment only 
tarried. The mill of God grinds slow, but it grinds 
exceedingly small; in eighty years cast your eye on 
that miserable land. God's vengeance at length came 
down, and ruin along with it. In every house in 
Egypt the first born was slain, from the palace to the 
lowest hovel. There still lived a God, and this im- 
mutable law of His had still to be executed; they 
had to reap just what they had sown. Then, some- 
times the mill is not so slow. Sometimes the punish- 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 161 

ment comes rapidly — like lightning. No sooner did 
the voice ascend that Cain had killed his brother, 
than God came down and put a mark upon his fore- 
head. Scarcely had Judas betrayed his master than 
he came back with his thirty pieces of silver, and, 
torn with remorse, threw them down before the 
priests, and went out and hung himself. You will 
find that very often judgment and destruction come 
very sudden — come like a flash from the throne of 
God. I remember, in the north of England, a prom- 
inent citizen told me a sad case that happened there 
in the town of Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was about a 
young boy. He was very young, but he said he was 
too young to go to a Sunday-school. He was an 
only child. The father and mother thought everything 
of him, and did all they could for him. But he fell 
into bad ways; he took up with evil characters, 
and finally got to running with thieves. He 
didn't let his parents know about it. One night 
they got him to break into a saloon-— what the peo- 
ple there call a public house. They stood outside 
while he entered the house and broke into the till. 
He was caught, and in one short week he was tried, 
convicted, and sent for ten years to Van Dieman's 
Land. His term of servitude expired, and he re- 
turned to his native land. He came to the town 
where his mother and father used to live, and soon 
stood at the door of his old home. He had been gone 
ten years, and what a change he found there. My 
friends, ten years seem a short time, but look back 
over the period of ten years in your lives, and see 
how many changes have taken place. He went to 



162 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

his old home and knocked, but a stranger came to 
the door and stared him in the face. "No, there's 
no such person lives here, and where your parents 
are I don't know," was the only welcome he received. 
Then he turned through the gate, and went down 
the street, asking even the children that he met 
about his folks, where they were living, and if they 
were well. But everybody looked blank. Ten years 
had rolled by, and though that seemed perhaps a 
short time, how many changes had taken place! 
There where he was born and brought up, he was 
low an alien, and unknown even in his old haunts. 
But at last he found a couple of townsmen that re- 
membered his father and mother, and they told him 
the old house had been deserted long years ago; 
that he had been gone but a few months before his 
father was confined to his house, and very soon 
after died broken-hearted; and that his mother had 
gone out of her mind. He went to the mad-house 
where his mother was, and went up to her and said: 
"Mother, mother, don't you know me? I am your 
son!" But she raved, and slapped him on the face, 
and shrieked, "You are not my boy!" and then 
raved again and tore her hair. He left the asylum 
•more dead than alive, so completely broken-hearted 
that he died in a few months. Yes, the fruit was 
long growing, but at last it ripened to the harvest 
like a whirlwind, and vengeance made quick work of 
it. The death harvest was reaped. 

But bear in mind what I have said to-night, and 
be not doubters, even if the harvest is slow. Let 
me read you the passage: " Because sentence against 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 163 

their evil deeds is not executed speedily, therefore 
the hearts of the sons of men are fully set in to do 
them evil Though a sinner do evil a hundred 
times and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know 
that it shall be well with them that fear God, which 
fear before Him, but it shall not be well with the 
wicked, neither shall He prolong His days, which 
are a shadow, because he feareth not before God." 

My friends, if you sow in the flesh you will reap 
disappointment; you will reap gloom, despair and 
remorse; the harvest will be death and hell — that 
will be the end; but if you sow of the Spirit, you 
will reap peace, joy, happiness, life everlasting; for 
God has said it. There are a great many things in 
this world that we are not sure of — we are sure of 
nothing, I may say. I am not sure that I will 
finish this sermon; I am not sure that I may go 
home to-night; we cannot say, positively, that the 
sun will rise to-morrow morning. Yes, my friends, 
there are a great many things that we are not sure 
of; but there is one thing we are sure of, for God 
has said it. You can be sure that your sins will find 
you out. If we don't judge ourselves and confess 
our sins they will find us out. "He that covereth 
his sins shall not prosper;" that is God's decree. 

Now I have been censured by many for advising 
two men who had committed crime to go back 
and confess their sin. One man the other day 
was cursing me for doing so. " A pretty kind 
of religion this is," he said ; but my friends, if 
a man has gone into a court and publicly perjured 
himself, he cannot serve God till he publicly con- 



164 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

f esses it. If he has sinned in public he must con- 
fess his sin in public. These men have gone back 
and written letters full of encouragement. One of 
them says, " Perhaps I will go to the penitentiary 
for three years, but what is that in comparison to 
the burden I would have carried had I not con- 
fessed." Now bear in mind that if you cover your 
sin you shall not prosper; you may keep it secret 
but it will eventually come out. Look at the sons 
of Jacob! Look at them when they took away their 
brother, and after they had delivered him into 
slavery, see them coming back. How much they 
must have suffered with their secret during those 
twenty years. What misery they must have endured 
as they looked during all these years at their old 
father sorrowing for his son Joseph. They knew 
the b@y had not been killed — they knew he was in 
slavery. For twenty years the sin was covered up, 
but at last it came back upon them. God had in 
the meantime been doing everything for Joseph; 
he had raised him nearly to the throne of Egypt. 
A famine struck the land of the father, and the old 
man sent his sons down to Egypt to get corn. God 
was at work. He was making these men bring their 
their own sin home to themselves. Their conscience 
smote them and they confessed in the presence of 
Joseph that their sin had found them out. Twenty 
years after it was committed that sin was resurrect- 
ed, and with it they were brought face to face. My 
friends, be sure at once that your sin will find you 
out. God has said it, and if He says a thing Ho 
means it. "He that covereth his sins shplTL kot 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 165 

prosper/' I can imagine someone saying to Absalom 
when he started out to fight his father, ' 'you shouldn't 
do this; you are committing a sin, and it will find 
you out." I can see that young friend looking down 
upon that man with scorn and contempt. The 
idea of his sins ever finding him out, ever coming 
back upon him. He probably would have said, 
"That man's talking for effect," like a good many 
say of me. You will hear some people say, " Well, 
now, any man who knows anything about education 
knows well enough that Moody is only preaching 
for effect." If a man tells me I am preaching for 
effect, I say, "Amen, Amen." That's w^hat I am 
trying to do; w T hat does a man preach for if it is not 
for effect. I am trying to create an effect and so 
wake you up to your condition, and if you don't 
wake up, the reaping time will come upon you, the 
whirlwind of troubles and sorrows will rush over 
your defenseless head, and then you will reap what 
you have sown in years gone by. 

But let me say that if you are willing to confess 
your sins — I don't care what the sin may be — God is 
willing and ready to take it away. As I have said, 
there has been a great deal of talk about my inter- 
fering with those prisoners lately. Some one has 
said in speaking about that man in Ohio, "Well, 
that is a queer kind of Christianity, to send a man 
a way back to the penitentiary to suffer?" Let me 
say here that that young man has said in his last 
letter: "I think I am happier than you are, Mr. 
Moody; God is helping me to bear the burden; God 
is answering my prayers." My friends, it was a 



166 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

great deal better for that man to confess his crime 
than to try to hide it away. If a man commits a 
crime he should suffer the penalty. I must suffer 
the penalty if I break my arm in fighting. The man 
with whom I fought may forgive me for fighting 
with him, but I have to suffer all the same w^ith my 
arm. A man got into a Quarrel and got crippled, 
and some time ago he became converted, but al- 
though God has forgiven him his sin he has to re- 
main a cripple all his life. So a man must reap what 
he sows. I heard of an illustration that just helps me 
out here. Suppose I have a field, and I say to a 
man, "I w-ant you to sow that field w T ith wheat." 
The man has become very angry — all out of sorts 
w T ith me, and when he sow^s that wheat he puts in a 
lot of tares. When the wheat has come up I see 
among it a great many tares. I say to him, "Did 
you sow these tares?" "Well," he says, i( I will 
confess; yes, sir, I did it; I sowed these tares; I will 
confess it instead of covering it up; but, sir, I am 
very sorry;" and I forgive him. But when the 
wheat has to be harvested I make the man reap the 
tares also. 

You know how David fell. No man rose so high 
and fell so far, I think. God took him from the 
slieepf old and put him upon a throne. He took him 
from obscurity and made him King cf Israel r.nd 
Judea ; gave him lands in abundance, and would 
have given him more if he had wanted them. Ho 
was on the pinnacle of glory, and honored among 
men. But one day, while looking out of a window, 
Li3 saw' a woman with whom he became enamored. 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. l6< 

He yielded to the temptation, and ordered her to be 
brought into the palace, and committed the terrible 
sin of adultery. After that, as is the case with all 
men who commit a sin, he had to commit another 
to cover it up, so he laid plans to kill her husband, 
and ordered him to be put in a position in the ranks 
of his army so that he could be killed. Months 
rolled away, and one day Nathan came into the 
palace of the king. I can imagine that David was 
glad to see him. Nathan began to tell him about 
two men who dwelt in a certain city. The one was 
rich, the other poor; one had herds and flocks, and 
the other had only a little ewe lamb, and he went on 
to tell how this rich man seized this ewe lamb, all 
that the poor man had, and slew it. I can see the 
anger of David as it flashed from his eye when he 
heard the story, and he cried: u As the Lord liveth, 
the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.'' 
He turned to Nathan, and in tones of thunder de- 
manded who the man was. "Thou art the man," 
was the reply of Nathan. David had convicted 
himself. "The man who did this thing shall die." 
Then the Lord said: "I will raise up evil against 
thee out of thine own house, because thou hast kept 
this thing secret." Soon after, the hand of death 
was put upon that house; not only did death enter 
his house; but it wasn't long before his eldest son 
committed adultery with his sister, and another 
committed murder — murdered his own brothers, and 
went off into a foreign land into exile. Then he got 
up a rebellion and drove the king from the throne, 
and at last died and w^as buried like a dog, and they 



168 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

heaped stones upon his resting place. " Whatso- 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." David 
committed adultery, so did his son; David committed 
murder, his son did the same. He was paid back in 
his own coin. He learned the truth of this passage: 
" Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." Why, I hear things every day in this city of 
Chicago that make my ears tingle. I heard of three 
cases within the last six hours where men who have 
gone to the altar and sworn before God to love, 
cherish, and protect the women who became their 
wives — who have become, some of them, mothers 
of children — and, because these men have seen other 
women they like better, they have cast off these 
women whom they have sworn before God to love. 
Do you think there is a God in heaven ? Do you 
think that God is not going to punish these men? 
They may go on in their career — punishment may 
not come for a little while, but the wheels of judg- 
ment are going on, and retribution will come. 
Some of these heart-broken wives say it is hard. 
Wait a little while. His eyes cover all the earth, 
and man cannot deceive Him. He has said : " What- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
High heaven has decreed it, and I beg of you, if 
you have committed this sin, go and cry to the God 
of mercy. Go, confess it ; don't try to cover it up. 
Let every sin be brought out; if you don't, your own 
conscience will turn against you by and by. 

When I was in London I went into a wax- work 
there — Mme. Tussaud's — and I went into the cham- 
ber of horrors. There were wax figures of all kinds 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 169 

of murderers in that room. There was Booth, who 
killed Lincoln, and many of that class; but there was 
one figure that I got interested in, who killed his wife 
because he loved another woman, and the law didn't 
find him out. He married this woman and had a 
family of seven children, and twenty years passed 
away. Then his conscience began to trouble him. 
He had no rest; he could hear his murdered wife 
pleading continually for her life. His friends began 
to think he was going out of his mind; he became 
haggard, and his conscience haunted him, till at last 
he went to the officers of the law and told them that 
he was guilty of murder. He wanted to die, life 
was so much of an agony to him. His conscience 
turned against him. My friends, if you have done 
wrong, may your conscience be woke up, and may 
you testify against yourself. It is a great deal better 
to judge our own acts and confess them, than go 
through the world with a curse upon you. And if 
you to-night will judge your own sin and confess it, 
He is faithful to forgive. He will forgive every 
sinner here if you but come to Him in faith, and will 
blot out all your iniquities. 

I was telling of a young man who spoke up in the 
association one night. He got up at the close of the 
meeting and said, "Mr.- Moody, may I say a few 
words ?" Well, I thought I wouldn't, but then I 
thought perhaps he has a message from God, and 1 
told him to speak. He went on and urged these 
young men to accept salvation. " If you have friends 
praying for you, if you have mothers praying for 
you, treat them kindly, for you will not always have 



170 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

them with you." Then he went on to tell how he 
had once a father and mother who loved him dearly, 
and who prayed continually for him. He was an 
only child. His father died, and after the burial his 
mother became more anxious than ever for his sal- 
vation. Sometimes she would come to him and put 
her arms around his neck and say with kindness, 
" Oh, my boy, I would be so happy if you would 
only be a Christian, and could pray with me." He 
would push her away: "No, mother; I'm not going 
to become a Christian yet; I am going to wait a 
little longer and see the world. ? He would try to 
banish the subject from his mind altogether. Some- 
times he would wake up at the midnight hour, and 
would hear the voice of that mother raised in sup- 
plication for her boy: " Oh, God, save my boy; have 
mercy upon him." At last, this is the way he put 
it: "It got too hot for him." He saw he had either 
to become a Christian or run away. And away he 
ran; and became a prodigal and a wanderer. He 
heard from her indirectly; he could not let his mother 
know where he was, because he knew she would 
have gone to the end of the world to find him. One 
day he got word that his mother was very sick. He 
began to think: "Suppose mother should die, I 
w r ould never forgive myself," and he said, "I will go 
home," but then he thought, "Well, if I go home, 
she will be praying at me again, and I can't stay 
under her roof and listen to her prayers," and his 
proud, stubborn heart would not let him go. Months 
went on, and again he heard indirectly that his 
mother was very sick. His conscience began to 



ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 171 

trouble him. He knew he would never forgive him- 
self if he didn't go home, and he finally determined. 
There were no railroads, and he had to go in a stage- 
coach. At night he got into the town. The moon 
w^as shining, and he could see the little village 
before him. The mother's home was about a mile 
from where he landed, and on his way he had to 
pass the village grocery, and as he went along, he 
thought he would pass through the grave-yard 
and see his fathers grave. "What," he thought, 
"if my mother has been laid there." When he 
got up . to the grave he saw by the light of the 
moon a new-made grave. He felt the turf, and the 
earth was fresh and soft. He knew who had been 
laid there, and for once in his life the thought flashed 
upon him, "Who will pray now for my lost soul; 
my mother and father lie there, and they are the only 
ones who ever prayed for me." "Young man," 
said he, " I spent that night at my mother's grave, 
and before the sun rose, my mother's God had become 
my God. But I can never forgive myself for mur- 
dering my mother, although Christ has forgiven 
me." My friends, that poor fellow had to reap what 
he had sowed. 

I may be speaking to-night to some young men 
whose mother perhaps just now is in her closet, 
wrestling in prayer for you. Bless God, boy, for 
that mother. Do not treat that mother contempt- 
uously; do not deny her prayer to-night; do not 
make light of your mother's cries to God this night. 
God's best gift on earth to you is that praying 
mother. She is your dearest, most unselfish friend 



172 ADDRESS TO YOUNG MEN. 

in all the world. Will you not heed her pleading 
prayer? Come out like a man; come to your moth- 
er's Saviour, and take Him to be your God. May 
the God of heaven convict you of sin, and draw you 
to Himself, and this will be the best night you've 
had upon earth. 

How many are there in this room to-night who 
have moral courage to stand up right in this 
Tabernacle and say, "Pray for me V How many 
in this room to-night would like to become Chris- 
tians ? How many are there in this room now who 
would like to have prayer for them, beseeching 
prayer, that God will save them ? I am going to lead 
in prayer, and as many as would like to have prayer 
— personal prayer, to God, will just rise. You can 
just stand right up one after another. Never mind 
if there is but one of you; just remain standing. 
There's another who's got moral courage to rise to- 
night. Just stand up, will you, and remain so while 
others join you. There, there, friends, don't get up 
as if you were ashamed or scared; rise up and show 
me and God that you are in earnest. I would like 
to see every man out of Christ rising right up here. 
There's another in the gallery, and another; well, 
keep rising; I would sit here all night and see you 
rise up in the galleries there and everywhere. Every 
man and woman in this assembly, every boy, who 
would like to be a Christian, will you just rise now, 
all of you. 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 173 



How to be Saved.* 



I wonder how many of these people here this 
afternoon would like to be saved? I am not going 
to ask those who would rise. I do not know whether 
anyone would have courage enough to rise, and by 
that act say, "I would like to be saved." Perhaps 
you say to yourselves, "If that man will just tell 
me the way how I can be saved this afternoon, I 
will be saved." I believe one reason why so few are 
saved, is because they do not come out to the meet- 
ngs expecting to be saved. They do not come for 
that purpose. There was a lady came to our meet- 
ing in Philadelphia — to the noon meeting at eleven 
o'clock; she came early so as to get a good seat. 
After the meeting was over we had another meeting 
for women, and she stayed at that. In the after- 
noon we had another meeting and she stayed at 
that. She had made up her mind not to leave the 
meetings until she had found Christ. She did not 
find Him at that meeting, but she might have found 
Him. He was offered freely to every one, at all of 
them. So she stayed at the afternoon meeting, and 
still no light came. She stayed at the evening 
meeting and went into the inquiry meeting after- 

* From " Glad Tidings," by permission of E. B. Treat, Publisher. 



174 HOW TO BE SAVED. 

wards. Between eleven and twelve o'clock she took 
me by the hand and said, " I will trust Him." And 
she rejoiced in the Saviours love. I met her after- 
wards. There was not a face shown more than hers 
did. There was a woman who came determined to 
find Him. "When we search for God with all our 
hearts we are sure to find Him. 

I am not going to preach so much of a sermon to- 
day, as I am going to try to tell you the Way of 
Life. I had a long talk with a man yesterday who, 
I really believe, was honestly seeking the Kingdom 
of God; but the trouble was, he was determined to 
try to seek Him in his own way, and trying to work 
the thing out himself, instead of just trusting to 
Jesus for it. I hope he is here to-night, and that the 
Lord may bless this little talk to his soul, and that 
he may to-night sleep safely in the arms of Jesus 
Christ. It is supremely important to every soul 
here this day to trust in Curist and be saved. I am 
going to take up a few Scriptural illustrations. The 
first is the ark. When I was in Manchester, in one 
of the inquiry meetings, I went up into the gallery 
to talk with a few men who were standing together, 
and who were inquirers of the Way of Life. And 
while they were standing in a little group around 
me, there came up another man and got on the out- 
side of the audience, and I thought by the expression 
of his face that he was skeptical. I did not think he* 
had come to find Christ. But as I went on talking, 
I noticed the tears trickling down his cheeks. I 
said, " My friend, are you anxious about your soul's 
salvation?' He said, " Yes, very." I asked him 



HOW TO BE SAVED. W* 



what was the trouble, and I kept on talking to that 
ore man, thinking that if he could understand me 
perhaps the others would. He said he wanted to 
feel all right about it. I explained to him by means 
of an illustration, and asked him, "Do you see it? 
He said "No." I used another, and asked him, 
"Do yon see it yet!" and he said "No" again. I 
gave still another, and still he said he did not see. I 
then said, " Was it Noah's feeling that saved him; or 
was it his ark! Was what saved Noah his righteous- 
ness? Was it his life, was it his prayers, was it his tears, 
was it his feelings, or was it the ark?" He came im- 
mediately and grasped me by the hand, and said, ' I 
see it now; it is all right now; I've got to go away 
on the next train, and I'm in a hurry, but you have 
made it plain to me; good-bye." And he went off 
I thought it was so sudden that he could not have 
understood it. But the next Sunday afternoon he 
came and tapped me on the shoulder and smiled, 
and asked me if I remembered him. I said no, that 
I remembered his face, but could not tell who he 
was or where I had seen him before. He said, "Do 
you remember a man that came up into the inquiry- 
room the other day, and you explained to him how 
it was Noah's ark that saved him? I did not see 
any illustration until you used that one, and then I 
saw it all." I asked him how he was, and he said 
bo had been all right ever since, and that the ark 
had saved him. I afterwards learned that he was 
one of the best business men of Manchester. His 
feelings did not save him. The ark saved him. 



176 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 



I want to prove to you that salvation is instant- 
aneous. It is just as sudden as a man walking 
through a doorway. One minute he is on this side/ 
the next he is on that side. There was one minute 
when Noah was exposed to the wrath that was to 
come over the whole world; but when he went 
through the doorway of the ark, that moment he 
was safe. There are many who are trying to make 
an ark for themselves out of their feelings, "out of 
their own good deeds. But God has provided an 
ark. If Noah had had to build himself an ark when 
the flood came, he would have been lost like the 
rest. A good many of those men who perished 
when that flood came tried to make arks for them- 
selves, but they all perished helplessly. They 
tried to make boats and rafts, and tried every 
way they could to save themselves, but they 
perished because they were not in the ark that 
God had appointed, So, to-day, every man and 
every woman must perish that is not in the ark which 
God has appointed for their salvation. A knowl- 
edge about the ark is not going to help you. A 
great many persons flatter themselves they are going 
to be saved because they know a great deal about 
Jesus Christ. But your knowledge of Him will 
not save you. Noah's carpenters probably knew as 
much about the ark as Noah did, and perhaps more. 
They knew that the ark was strong. They knew 
it was built to stand the Deluge. They knew it was 
made to float upon the waters. They had helped to 
build It. But they were just as helpless when the 
flood came as men who lived thousands of miles 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 177 

away. Men who lived right in sight of the ark, 
that knew all about it, perished like the rest, because 
they were not in the ark. I know something about 
the different lines of steamers, and I have crossed 
the Atlantic. Here is another man that has never 
heard there was such a line of steamers. We both 
want to go to Europe. My knowledge of a lino of 
steamers does not help me a bit if I do not take tho 
means to go there. You may hear about Christ, 
but if you do not believe in Christ you cannot be 
saved. Your knowledge is not going to help you to 
your salvation. What you want to do is just to 
make Christ your ark, and then to step into that ark 
and be saved. 

I can imagine you saying, "I do not see how a 
person can be saved all at once." So, many persons 
think they have to work themselves out gradually, 
that they have to do a little here, a little there, and 
after they have toiled and worked, and have con- 
sidered the matter prayerfully for some time, they 
will be more acceptable. The Israelites were told to 
sprinkle blood upon the door-posts, that the angel 
might not enter the houses where the blood was to 
be seen. There was one moment when they had 
not sprinkled the blood on their door-posts, and when 
they were exposed to the blight of the destroying 
angel; and there was another moment when the 
blood had been sprinkled there, and they were safe. 
There is. a legend told about this which illustrates it 
very well. It is about a little girl who was the first- 
born, and consequently who would have been a 
victim on that night if the protecting blood were 



178 HOW TO BE SAVED. 

not sprinkled on the door-posts of her father's house. 
The order was that the first-born was to be struck 
by death all through Egypt. This little girl was 
sick, and she knew that death would take her, and 
she might be a victim of the order. She asked her 
father if the blood was sprinkled on the door-posts. 
He said it was, that he had ordered it to be done. 
She asked him if he had seen it there. He said no, 
but he had no doubt that it was done. He had seen the 
lamb killed, and had told a servant to attend to it. 
But she was not satisfied, and asked her father to 
go and see, and urged him to take her in his arms 
and carry her to the door to see. They found that 
the servant had neglected to put the blood upon the 
posts. There the child was exposed until they found 
the blood and put it upon the door-posts, and when 
she saw it she was satisfied. That was all the assur- 
ance that she needed. So a great many are saying, 
"Do you feel this and that? Do you feel, do you 
feel, do you feel?' God does not tell you to feel. 
He tells you to believe. He says, " When I see the 
blood I will pass over," and if you are sheltered be- 
hind the blood you are perfectly safe and secure. 
Suppose I say to a man, " Do you feel that you own 
this piece of land?" He looks at me a moment 
and thinks I must be crazy. He says "Feel? 
Why feeling has nothing to do with it. I look at 
the title. That is all I want." So you see, all you 
have to do is with the title. A great many are all 
the time saying : "Do you feel that you are safe?" 
But to all God says, "He that believeth in the 
Lord hath everlasting life." iMot " will have," it is 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 179 

the present tense, hath it to-day, hath it this very 
hour. If the devil can make you believe you will 
be saved sometime, and keep you from believing 
now and receiving now, that is all he wants. He 
knows that to-morrow will never come, and he puts 
it off from day to day, from month to month, and 
from year to year. My friends, Jesus Christ will 
never be more willing to save you than he is to-night, 
and the longer you put it off, the longer you w x ait, 
the further you are going from Him. Every day you 
put it off you are going back from God, and are 
making it harder for you to be saved. 

My next illustration is the serpent upon the pole. 
You sang a song to-night about it: " It is life just to 
look at the Crucified One." It is not to work that 
we are told. It is just to look. How simple ! You 
know a fiery serpent had gone through Israel and 
bitten many people, and they died. And the Israel- 
ites went to Moses and said: " Entreat the Lord to 
take away this serpent." They did not ask for a 
remedy ; they did not ask for the bitten ones to be 
allowed to recover. They could hear the groans of 
the dying all around. But God more than granted 
their prayers. God always gives us more than we 
ask for. He not only took away the serpent, but 
He said to Moses, " Make a brass serpent and put it 
on a pole and lift it on high, so that all who are 
bitten shall look and live. And it shall come to pass 
that when they look, they shall not die but live/' 
How simple ! A little child can look. It is so simple 
that the learned and the unlearned can look. You 
do not have to go to college to learn how to look. 



180 HOW TO BE SAVED. 

You do not have to pass through a university to 
learn how to look. That little child there is not more 
than three or four years old, but it understands how 
to look. If a mother wants her little child to look, 
she simply says, "Look, my child," and that is 
enough. So all that the bitten Israelites had to do 
was to look and live; and the very moment they 
looked they were saved instantaneously. It was as 
sudden as a flash of lightning. So many people say, 
"I do not understand how it is so many people can 
be saved all at once." Well, that is Jesus' way, 
and that is all there is about it. " God's thoughts 
are not our thoughts, and God's ways are not our 
ways." If we had been going to save the world, we 
would have gone about it in a different way from 
God's way, I have no doubt. If we had been going 
to save the bitten Israelites, the last way we would 
probably have thought of would have been to make 
a brass serpent and put it upon a pole. But God 
works as He pleases, and we must learn that His 
ways are His own and must prevail; and we must 
listen to Him, and if He says we will be saved at 
once, and that salvation is instantaneous, all we have 
to do is to submit and believe. Instead of looking 
at yourself, at your own sin, instead of looking at 
your past life, what you should do is just to take 
your eyes off of yourself and look at Christ. 

Now come back again to another Bible illustration. 
You know when the children of Israel came from 
the land of slavery and had the visitation of the fiery 
serpents, and after Moses had been commanded to 
raise the brazen serpent, he went to Pisgah and died. 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 181 

and Joshua led them into the Promised Land. 
Joshua then received a command from God that he 
should erect six cities, three on each side of the Jor- 
dan, which were to be cities of refuge. These places 
were to be put far enough apart so as to cover the 
whole land, that any man, no matter where he might 
be when he should have occasion to seek them, could 
easily gain access to one of them. The gates of these 
cities were to be kept open day and night, and the 
chief men of each city — the magistrates — were to 
keep the ways to these places free of all obstacles 
and stumbling-blocks, so that no one should be hin- 
dered in getting within the walls. And not only 
should the roads be kept smooth and well in repair, 
but all the bridges leading over streams and rivers 
should be kept up and in good condition, and 
sign posts were also to be placed at intervals 
along the road, showing the fugitive that he was 
on the right way — to keep him from straying. 
And to provide for the contingency of the man who 
was fleeing, not being able to read, there was a red 
finger put on the posts, which pointed the way. 
Thus a man even if he could read, was not compelled 
to stop and thus lose time; he saw the sign and sped 
on. The cities were also placed on hills, that every 
one could see them. The cities were erected for this 
purpose. It was considered a great dishonor among 
the Israelites if, when a man was killed, the nearest 
relation of him did not at once arm himself, seek 
out the slayer and kill him. Thus a man had no 
hope, if he had accidentally killed one, of saving his 
own life from the avenging hand of the brother or 



182 HOW TO BE SAVED. 

other relative, but to get within the walls of the 
nearest city of refuge; for it was the law that the 
moment he escaped that far the relation of the slain 
man could not touch him. Now for my illustration: 
Suppose I had killed a man unwittingly — that he and 
I had been out chopping in the woods, and suppose 
my axe had slipped out of my hand and had crushed 
in the skull of my companion. My only hope would 
be to get to one of these cities — my only hope was 
to escape for my life. I should have had no time 
to loiter, no time to hesitate or argue, no time to con- 
sider. I should have to start at once. The brother 
of my companion who had been killed, though thus 
purely through accident, was near and he was so 
incensed, or perhaps had some old score to pay off, 
that I should have no chance to stay and plead with 
him. He had made up his mind to kill me, and 
there was nothing left for me to do but fly. I know 
the young man's hot temper, and I see him on my 
track. I therefore spring out of the bush into the 
road, and it now becomes a life and death struggle. 
I see the city before me. Along the road I speed to 
the full extent of my strength. Down the hill I go 
as fast as I can; up the ravine I make my way; men 
see me coming; they do not check me, or throw any 
obstacles in my path; they get out of my way, and 
as I pass they wish me " God-speed," and warn me 
that the avenger is not far behind. Now I am in 
full view of the city; the gates are wide open; I know 
I shall not have to stop and knock when I get up to 
them. When I get closer, I see the citizens are on 
the walls. The information has reached them that 



HOW TO BE SAVED. 183 

a poor refugee is coming. Some of them have had 
to flee themselves, and they sympathize with me. 
They thus await me; but they see I am hard press- 
ed. I am almost on the point of giving out. But I say 
to myself, " Courage! another effort and I shall 
reach the gates and be safe." Oh, if I can only reach 
the city ! Ah, my friends, just look a/b the city; don't 
let any thing take your attention away. Look ! look ! 
see what I have to do. If I stop, loiter, or linger, I 
am lost. The avenger will soon be on me. I can 
almost hear him breathing behind me. I know his 
sword is ready to hew me down. I get nearer to the 
walls now. I see the people plainly; they beckon on 
with their hands. I strain every nerve. " Hurry, 
hurry, he is almost upon you — oh, he will be killed." 
I bring every muscle into play. The people crowd 
around the gate to receive me. "Now, now," they 
cry. I make one more bound; I pass them; I am 
safe. - That is instantaneous, isn't it ! One minute I 
am under the avenging sword ready to fall upon my 
head; the next minute I am perfectly secure. The 
avenger cannot enter. The officers see to that; they 
will not let him come in with his sword. Can you, 
my friends, have a better illustration of this life I 
Don't you know that death is on your track now, 
and is ready to have you a victim ? Don't you know 
that he may be only a few years, a few months, a 
few weeks, a few days, or even a few moments only, 
from you ? Even this very afternoon he may catch 
up to you. You may think him miles and miles 
behind you, years and years away, but just as surely 
as you live here he is only a little way behind you 



184 HOW TO BE SAVED. 

now — a great deal nearer than you imagine. Haste 
tlien to a place of refuge. If you are outside the city 
you perish; if you come within the walls of salvation 
you live secure. God has a city of refuge for you. 
He shows 3^ou by every unmistakable sign where it 
is, and He gives you warning that if you do not 
reach its walls you die. Come then. If you neglect 
these mercies how do you expect to save your life? 
How can you loiter and linger when death is bearing 
down upon you ? A little while and you will be lost; 
but if you make for the salvation offered to you, you 
will be safe in Christ, and you can look back and 
challenge death to his face. You can say in triumph, 
" Death, where is thy sting — grave where is thy 
victory." 



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"BLUNDERS 



OF A 



BASHFUL MAN." 



By the Popular Author of " A Bad Boy's Diary * 

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Wow the reading of it affected One Young Lady. 

Marysville, Mo., July 22, I88i. 
Author of "Bashful Man." 

Dear Friend— Having read your story m. uhe "Bashful Ma \*' and seeing 
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the Diimprof life— my next birthday will be nineteen .; I am of medium height,, 
©nd, if I do say it thyself , good looking. Now, wanting to get a good husband, 
$ rid thinking vou would suit me, I am at your service. If you think \ will do 
«ust diop me a ?**?* 'tries, and I will then tell further what I can do. Till the* 

I remain, sincerely yours, 

ANNA D. H • » • - 
£.S ■--* l^ose write any way.— Anna. 

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Aimer b 

«f. 8. OGILVIE & CO., Publishers, 

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Something to Bead! 



$10.00 WORTH FOK $1.50i 



We desire to call the attention of lovers of pure fiction to 
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Miss M. E. Braddon, 

one of the most popular and pleasing authors in the world, 
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We offer the Seven Stories, bound in handsome English 
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sent oy mail, post-paid, to any address, for only §1.50! Bound 
U». heavy paper covers, SI. 00. 

List of Stories we sell for %\M\ 

Lady Andiey's Secret 
The Octoroon, 

T&e Cloven Foot, 
His Secret, 

A Wavering Image, 
The Wages of Sin, 
Aurora Floyd, 

These stories are printed on fine heavy paper, from large, 
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Ask your bookseller for "SOMETHING TO BEAT," writ-l 
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Something to Head! 



$10.00 WORTH FOE $1.50! 



We desire to call the attention of lovers of pure fiction to 
the fact that we now offer, in bound book form, the following 
seven complete stories, written by 

Mt&. HeitFj Wood 9 

one of the most popular and pleasing authors in the world, 
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We offer the Seven Stories, bound in handsome English 
cloth, with elegant ornamental gold side and back stamp, 
sent by mail, post-paid, to any address, for only $1.50! Bound 
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List ©f Stories we send for $L50» 

East Lyixne; 

A Life's Secret? 

The Tale of Sin? 

Was He Severe? 

The Lost Bank-Mote ? 

The Doctor's Daughter; 
The Haunted Tower. 

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A $10.00 BOOK FOR $2.50! 

MOORE'S 

MM ASSISTANT AND COMPUTE MECHANIC, 

Containing over One Million Industrial Facts, 

CALCULATIONS, PROCESSES, TRADE SECRETS, RULES, LEGAL 
ITEMS, BUSINESS FORMS, etc., in every Occupation, from the 
Household to the Manufactory. 



A work of unequaled utility to every Mechanic, Farmer, Merchant, 
Business Man, Professional Gentleman. ai*d Householder, as it embraces 
the main points in over 200 Trades and Occupations. It contains 1010 
pages and over 500 illustrations. 

The following synopsis gives some idea of the value and scope of the 
Work The contents are as follows: 

Part 1.— Bread, Cracker, Pastry and Cake Baking, Domestic Cooking, etc. 

Part 2.— For Farmers, Horse Shoers, Stock Owners, Bee Keepers, etc. 

Part 3. — For Lumbermen, Carpenters. Builders. Contractors, Mill Owneis, 
Shipbuilders, Ship Owners, Freighters, Navigators, Quarry men, 
Merchants and Business Men generally. 

Part 4.— Natural Mechanical and Scientific Facts. 

Part 5 —For Dyers, Clothiers, Bleachers, Halters, Furriers and Manufac- 
turers. 

Part 6.— Medical Department, for Druggists, Physicians, Dentists, Perfum- 
ers, Barbers, and general Family Use. 

Part 7.— For Grocers, Tobacconists, Confectioners, Saloon Keepers, Syrups, 
Cordials, Ice Creams, Summer Drinks, Domestic Wines, Canned 
Goods, Soaps, etc. 

Part; 8. — For Tanners and Curriers, Boot, Shoe, Harness and Rubber Manu- 
facturers, Marble and Ivory Workers, Bookbinders, Anglers, Trap- 
pers, etc. 

Part 9.— For Painters, Decorators, Cabinet Makers, Piano and Organ Man- 
ufacturers, Polishers, Carvers, Gilders, Picture Frame and Art 
Dealers, China Decorators. Potters, Glass Manufacturers, Glass 
Staiuers and Gilders, Architects, Masons, Bricklayers, Plasterers, 
Stucco Workers, Kalsominers, Slaters, Roofers, etc. 

Part 10.— For Watchmakers, Jewelers, Gold and Silversmiths, Gilders, 
Burnishers, Colorers, Enamelers, Lapidaries, Diamond Cutters, 
Engravers, Die Sinkers, Stencil Cutters, Refiners, Sweepmelters. 

Part 11.— For Engineers, Firemen, Engine Builders, Steam Fitters, Master 
Mechanics, Machinists, Blacksmiths, Cutlers, Locksmiths, Saw, 
Spring, and Safe Manufacturers, Iron and Brass Founders, Mill 
Owners, Miners, etc. 

Part 12.— For Art Workers, Bronzing, Dipping and Lacquering, Brass Fin- 
ishers, Hardware Dealers, Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Tinman, Japan- 
ners, etc. 

Part 13.— For Printers and Publishers, Gas Companies and Consumers, Gun- 
smiths, Contractors, Quarry men, Coal Dealers, Oil Manufacturers, 
Sugar Refiners, Paper Manufacturers, Cotton and Woolen Manu- 
facturers, Cutlers, Needle and File Manufacturers, Metal Smelters, 
etc., etc. 

Pnrt 14.— The Amenities of Life, Useful Advice. 

1 art 15.— Tables, etc., Embracing Useful Calculations in every Business. 

Price in Cloth Binding, $2.50; in Leather Binding, $3.50. Standard Ex- 
port Edition, ClotM Binding, $3.00; in Leather, Lettered Back and Marbled 

Edges, Library Style, $4.00. 

Sent by mail, postpaid, to any address on receipt of price. Agents 

wanted, to whom we offer big pay. Address all orders and applications for 

an agency to 

J. S. OCILVIE & CO., Publishers, 

P. O. Box 2767. 31 Rose Street, New York. 



